Classi c 57/ 
Book, , S % 



'RESENTED BY 



DR. MURRAY GALT M OTTER 
2314 19th Street N. W. 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 



The Mercersburg Theology 



By 

REV. JOHN I. SWANDER, D.D., Ph.D., F.S.Sc. 

Author of "The Substantial Philosophy," "Text Book on 
Sound," "The Invisible World," "The Reformed 
Church," "The Swander Family," "Old 
Truths in New Form," "The Evolution 
of Religion," "The Divinity of 
Our Lord." 



A COURSE OF LECTURES 

Delivered in the Theological Seminary of the Reformed 
Church in the United States, at Lancaster, Pa., 
on the Foundation of the Swander Lecture- 
ship, and Published Under the Direc- 
tion of the Faculty. 



Philadelphia: 
Reformed Church Publication Board, 
1909. 



//. 



LC Control Number 



tmp96 031420 



Foundation of the Swander Lectureship. 



The Swander Lectureship in the Theological Semi- 
nary of the Reformed Church in the United States, 
located at Lancaster, Pa., was founded by the Reve- 
rend John I. Swander, D.D., and his wife, Barbara 
Kimmell Swander, for the two-fold purpose of promul- 
gating sound christological science, and of erecting a 
memorial to their daughter, Sarah Ellen Swander, 
born April 30th, 1862, died September 29th, 1879; 
and to their son, Nevin Ambrose Swander, born August 
7th, 1863, died March 29th, 1884. It shall be known 
as the " Sarah Ellen and Nevin Ambrose Swander 
Lectureship." For its maintenance a sum of money 
was given to the Board of Trustees of the said Theo- 
logical Seminary, the interest of which is to be applied 
for the publication of lectures in book form, in accord- 
ance with the conditions defined by the terms which 
accompanied the conveyance of the fund into the hands 
of the aforenamed Board of Trustees. 

These lectures are delivered by members of the 
Faculty of the Theological Seminary, and others whom 
the Faculty may select and secure for such service ; and 
while the said Faculty shall guard diligently against 
the admission of anything into these memorial vol- 
umes at variance with the truth as it is in Jesus, they 
shall not be held responsible for the views of the indi- 
vidual lecturers. 



Table of Contents. 



Lecture Page 

I. Introductory Thoughts 7 

II. Biographies of Its Founders 24 

III. Biographies — Continued 41 

IV. Mercersburg Philosophy 61 

V. Mercersburg Philosophy — Continued 82 

VI. Mercersburg Anthropology 103 

VII. Mercersburg Christology 123 

VIII. Mercersburg Ecclesiology 149 

IX. Mercersburg Soteriology 170 

X. Mercersburg Soteriology — Continued 185 

XI. Mercersburg Soteriology — Concluded 206 

XII. The Mercersburg Conception of Christian 

Cultus 221 

XIII. Christian Cultus — Continued 243 

XIV. Mercersburg Cultus — Concluded 257 

XV. Mercersburg Sociology 272 

XVI. Mercersburg Eschatology 287 

XVII. Mercersburg Eschatology — Concluded 301 



The Mercersburg Theology 



LECTURE I. 

Introductory Thoughts. 

Gentlemen of the Faculty and Young Gentlemen of the . 
Class : 

It is in compliance with your expressed wishes, and 
in obedience to your own request, that I begin the 
task of delivering a course of lectures on The Mer- 
cersburg Theology. There are several reasons why 
I should enter upon the discharge of this duty in a 
spirit of becoming modesty. First of all, I was never 
matriculated in the Mercersburg School, and numbered 
with the favored few who were permitted to sit at 
the feet of its chief apostles and drink in its teachings 
from the fountain head. Why such an one should 
have been selected to give a digest of what such teach- 
ings involved, is not clearly within the comprehension 
of a proselyte at the gate. The selection may possibly 
be accounted for either upon the assumption that 
ignorance is the best qualification of an impartial jury- 
man, or that " distance lends enchantment to the 
view. " Whatever may have been the motive prompt- 

7 



s 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



ing the invitation, the pleasurable task is now entered 
upon, in the hope that life may be spared and strength 
continued to traverse the field, which in the way of 
sweet anticipation is already opening up to our rap- 
tured vision. 

It is hoped that the circumstances looking and lead- 
ing up to the delivery of these lectures will help to 
exonerate your chosen oracle from the possible charge 
of presumption in venturing upon the work of re- 
viewing a distinctive cast of theological thought, which 
had not previously inspired the lovers of truth and 
challenged the religious intellectuality of the world. 
The author claims to be not entirely insensible to 
the delicacy of the position into which he has been 
pushed, and can, therefore, do nothing less than roll 
the responsibility back upon those who have drafted 
him into such service. 

The field into which we now enter, and through 
which we hope to pass, is one, not only of beautiful 
scenery, skirting the delectable mountains and tower- 
ing peaks of super-mundane truth and beauty, but 
also of cragged rocks, thorny hedges and deep ravines, 
which set barriers to an entrance into the great be- 
yond of all human limitations. We enter a field in 
which the wheat and the tares have been growing 
together, and will continue to so develop until the last 
great harvest day of history. We enter the gallery 
of the amphitheatre to look down upon the arena, 
in which some of the greatest men of the world have 
battled for the mastery of the principles which they 
represented. Neither are we to be mere idle spec- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



9 



tators of the combat. We, too, must struggle with 
error as long as we search after the truth. 

Another difficulty involved in the task before us, 
and in the treatment of the subject now passing under 
consideration, is the fact that the Anglo-American 
mind has not yet been fully educated up to the mode 
of thinking more prevalent in the land where this 
theology first sunk its taproot in the soil of German 
philosophy. This may be a partial explanation of 
the fact that it has encountered much prejudice and 
opposition, as a distinctive apprehension of a generally 
admitted truth. For this reason there should be no 
harsh judgment passed upon those who, on account 
of their more mechanical and fragmentary method 
of thinking, are not able to move along a line parallel 
with the inductive activities peculiar to a more or- 
ganic mode of reasoning. It should be for you, young 
gentlemen, rather a cause of gratitude that you have 
already been mentally drilled to search after and see 
the truth, as it stands related to each of its organic 
parts, and each and all of the parts as related to one 
organic whole. God hasten the time when it shall be 
universally acknowledged that nothing can be fully 
and clearly known, except as it is considered in its 
necessary relation to all other things. 

The author also hopes that he is not entirely un- 
mindful of the fact that there may be unjustifiable 
prejudgment in favor of any system of thought, when 
its enthusuaslic and zealous disciples, in sympathy with 
the general trend of such thought, are not thoroughly 
self-informed as to all that the system really in- 
volves and implies. To be secure against prejudice, 



10 



The Mbrcbrsburg Theology. 



impartiality and radical error of judgment, the critic's 
powers of analysis and synthesis must complement 
each other in an intelligent, calm and perfect poise. 
Otherwise there can be no thorough knowledge of 
any subject, under consideration in all the relations 
and correlations of its essential and incidental parts. 
To give a correct statement of a case, like the one now 
about to pass under review, it is not required that the 
critic should act in the character of one sitting in 
judgment, upon what he may regard as the merits or 
demerits of such case. Furthermore, in the posses- 
sions of such qualifications, the reviewer may or may 
not reserve to himself and exercise the right to pass 
either favorable or unfavorable judgment upon any 
point or part of the work passing under his inspection. 
Neither is he obliged by any law of literary ethics 
to disguise himself, in order to keep his own personal 
views in the background. 

One thing the reviewer should regard as absolutely 
necessary to a fair and impartial discharge of his duty 
in the premises, viz: An intelligent recognition of 
the fact that so long as that which is perfect has not 
yet fully come there can be no system of human think- 
ing which does not involve more or less error. As 
long as wheat grows, it will be found mixed up with 
the chaff, in which the growing kernel is enclosed. 
And as long as heads of smut are found in the field 
of cereals ripening for the harvest, there can be no 
sanity in the conclusion that the grain thus smuttily 
associated is not itself worthy of being separated from 
such foul fungus, gathered into the garner and made 
subservient to the purposes of Providence, in giving 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



11 



seed to the sower and bread to the eater. Only by 
a distinct recognition of that which is good in any great 
world-movement in connection with a corresponding 
detection of that which is bad in the same system, can 
there be a real issue joined in any attempt to remove 
the evil from such a system. Upon the other hand, 
when there is no such recognition and distinction in 
the associated relation between the good and the evil 
in the present composite constitution of things, and 
when consequently no clear issue can be joined, the 
result must be sham-battles by moonlight with pop- 
gun artillery. 

It is also felt by the reviewer of the theology now 
coming under the scope of his limited and imperfect 
vision, that the task assigned him is one of tremendous 
proportions. This feeling seems justified by the fact 
that the subject required more than the work of sur- 
veying a narrow neck of land with a view to a state- 
ment of the minerals underling the surface, a chemical 
analysis of the soil, an inventory of its forest trees, and 
a description of its climatic advantages. Even this 
is much more than would be required in a thorough 
d'gesi - . of some theological scheme whose clearness is 
accounted for by its characteristic shallowness. How 
superlatively great the task of measuring the dimen- 
sions of anything that claims all space for its latitude, 
all time for its longitude, all depths for its profunditude, 
and for its altitude, the glory of God in the highest. 

In the opening paragraph of this introduction, it 
was stated that the author had never trodden the classic 
halls of Mercersburg, and that it was consequently 
surprising that his « olleagues in the faculty of the 



12 The Mercersburg Theology. 



Seminary at Lancaster had drafted him into the service 
in which he is now engaged. Upon the assumption 
of the truth that "wisdom is justified of hei children," 
some other selection would have seemed more fitting. 
Be that as it may, the author, in order to relieve the 
case of apparent incongruity, now steps forward and 
clears his own conscience by a full confession that he 
is not entirely ignorant of the subject assigned him 
for treatment in this course of lectures. Although the 
academic walls of Mercersburg never echoed to his 
tread, he modestly claims to have been for half a 
century, in such an attitude to that distinctive school 
of thought and in such relation to the literature thereof, 
as to be able to echo bad: in some measure the teach- 
ings that rang out therefrom through all its mediums 
of conduction to the world around For sixty years 
he has been a somewhat thoughtful reader of the Re- 
formed Church Messenger; for half a century he has 
eagerly devoured the contents of The Mercersburg Re- 
view and the Reformed Quarterly Review, often return- 
ing to read again, and studying to a point of almost 
hopeless perplexity those articles which contained knowl- 
edge too wonderful for his limited scholastic qualifica- 
tions, and so high in its seeming transcendental flights 
that he could not attain the eto; lor fifty years he has 
been an assiduous studen.. of Mercersburg literature 
in its multiplicity and multiformity of style; for several 
years he listened to the incisive sermons and lectures 
of Dr. E. E. Higbee in Tiffin, Ohio, wondering on what 
kind of meat he had fed, that he had become so theo- 
logically well developed; during his entire course in 
Heidelberg Theological Seminary, he sat at the feet 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



13 



of that beloved Gamaliel, Dr. Moses Kieffer, one of 
the firstborn sons of Mercersburg, and a workman 
who knew how \o handle a Rubjcet which had already 
set the Ohio Synod all agog : During the thirty years 
war, known as the liturgical controversy, he watched 
the Mercersburg theology in its application to the cultus 
of the chuich. Furthermore, he has read nearly all 
the published works proceeding from the pens of Mer- 
cersburg's leading apostles. Hence, it seems meet and 
right that at this point he should confess himself 
not entirely unqualified for the work that his colleagues 
have given him to do. 

Neither is the author willing to confess that he has 
been entirely ignorant of the reasonable assumption 
that there has been progress in this as in all other great 
organic church movements. The above statement 
may or may not be taken as an anticipation of what 
is yet to follow in this course of lectures. There is pro- 
gress in any life-movement of the world along the line 
of Providence and parallel with the unfolding of the 
great plan of the ages. There are many movements in 
the course of human events which are superficially re- 
garded as progressive while they are either tangential, 
regressive, or mere eddies along the banks of the world's 
historic stream. So is there also mere rotary motion. 
This terr^snial ball on which we live moves 600,000,000 
miles a year, but it does not get perceptibly any nearer 
to the source of solar light. Yet, as the earth is not 
a creature endowed with rational and volitional powers, 
it is not expected to do more than to move in the orbit 
ordained by Him, who suspends the planets on gravi- 
tational cords, " stretches out the north over the empty 



14 The Mercersburg Theology. 



place, and hangs the earth upon nothing. " Job 
xxvi: 7. 

Yes, the astronomer of Uz represented God as hang- 
ing the earth upon nothing, and much of the so-called, 
philosophy of the world is trying to out-do Almighty 
God in his attempts to hang a theory of the moral 
and rational universe upon nothing more. Alas, 
what a failure! While true progress moves on a line 
parallel with the divine purpose, it is also at the same 
time, a development of the primordial principle, which 
inheres in the constitution of the world in virtue of the 
advent of the divine into the human. Since God is 
in the world, which was made by Him, and since He 
"by His almighty and everywhere present power, up- 
hold and governs heaven and earth, with all creatures," 
it is about time for any theology, that is not to be 
laughed out of countenance, to recognize that fact, 
that God's way in the world is to hang things upon 
something. What is that something? Let us pa- 
tiently wait, and cherish the hope that we shall ulti- 
mately see. 

No science can perfect itself in advance of a corre- 
spond ng degree of perfection in other sciences to which 
it stands correlated. It is equally true tha :, no science 
can be clearly understood without an approximately 
clear and correct knowledge of all the sister sciences 
upon which it is measurably dependent and to 
which it stands mutually related in the general con- 
stitution of things. Even theology, which may be 
termed the queen of all sciences, can not solve all the 
problems which are peculiarly its own without the 
turning on of the side-lights from some of the sciences 
which are more secular and subordinate. Take, for 



The Mercersburg Theology. 15 



example, that branch of theology known as eschat- 
ology. How can christian inquiry make progress to 
completion in the systematic knowledge of the last 
things in terrestrial history, without a corresponding 
progress in the study of Psychology, which is as yet 
in its infancy? The foregoing remarks of this para- 
graph are especially applicable to a system of theo- 
logical research so complex in its portions and pro- 
portions, so broad in its scope, and so comprehensive 
in its pretentions as to claim the whole moral, mental 
and experimental universe as its proper field of in- 
vestigation and development. 

It does not follow from the foregoing outline of 
an ideal something, that the Mercersburg Theology is 
strictly answerable, either in part or as a whole, to 
such a hypothetical forecast. The most that can be 
reasonably inferred from such an indefinite prospectus 
is that the outline assumes the possibility that a fair 
and thorough examination of the system about to 
pass under review will in some measure justify the 
assumption. Something must be assumed as a neces- 
sary starting-point in all logical processes of reasoning. 
All sound syllogisms have their foundations in reason- 
able assumptions. Thus at the very beginning of his 
revelation of himself to man the divine Author of the 
Bible gave his rational creatures to understand that 
they should assume his existence. It is also assumed 
in all righteous and humane jurisprudence, that a just 
investigation of any man's character before the bar 
of the law must of necessity start with the assumption 
that the prisoner be regarded as innocent, until by 
an impartial examination of the case, he is proven 



16 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



guilty. The most and the least that can be said in 
advance is, that the Mercersburg Theology is entitled 
to a fair and impartial review, in order that the verdict 
may not be tainted with prejudice. 

Probably no distinctive system of scientific and re- 
ligious thought ever found itself defended by more 
scholarly devotion in genuine friendship on the one 
hand, and defamed by more bitter opponents upon 
the other hand, than the Mercersburg Theology. While 
it floated into limited favor upon the gentle zephyrs 
of cordial sympathy, it was opposed and tossed about 
by all the adverse winds that blew from every point 
of the religious compass. Comparatively little was 
said, done, or written in its behalf, because there were 
comparatively few who had even an approximate 
knowledge of its fundamental principle, and meaning. 
Much, however, was written, done and said to traduce 
its character, because there were legions who knew 
nothing about it. Simeon and Anna waited for it 
in the temple, while all the sycophants of Herod sought 
the young child's life to destroy it. 

The greatest compliment that can be paid to any 
system, secular or sacred, is for it to be crowned with 
maledictions by other systems, which are diametric- 
ally opposed to it. Such, to a great extent, was the 
character of the coronation of Mercersburg Theology 
in the palmiest days of its primitive persecution. 
Romanism and rationalism poured out the phials of 
their extreme unction. Puseyism and pietism vied 
with each other in their common opposition from 
different directions and for different reasons. In the 
crusade against the rare fruit of scholarly attainments; 



The Mercersburg Theology. 17 



men of mediocre talents and ministers with no positive 
qualifications whatever for their supposed vocation, 
professed to know all about Mercersburg Theology, 
while the} 7 knew not a letter of its alphabet. Religious 
fools made a great noise, while religious fanatics fired 
their blind zeal with an imaginary coal from its altar. 
While these things were being done in green trees, rival 
theological institutions, suspected of an ulterior rather 
than an altruistic motive, seemed to act upon the pre- 
sumptive fear that the gates of hell were about to pre- 
vail against the citadel of evangelical Protestantism, 
and that it was their duty in the class-room, and their 
only comfort in life and death to anathematize Mer- 
cersburg Theology. 

Should any one think that the foregoing paragraph 
betrays a purpose to prejudice the case coming present- 
ly before the court, the author respectfully begs leave 
to say that he is not conscious of any such design. His 
object is rather to forestall any such purpose by clean- 
ing out the underbrush of prejudicial ignorance in 
order to clear and secure the right of way into the 
virgin forest of truth's tall timber. Eesides, it is 
supposed to be taken for granted that the reviewer 
of the system coming under his impartial considera- 
tion is not expected to play the pitiable poltroon by 
running away from the obvious facts of history. 
Neither is neutrality to be reckoned as an element 
essential to impartiality, when things are to be weigh- 
ed in the scales of eternal verity. A man with no 
positive elements in his moral and mental make- 
up is not competent to review with fairness and 
frankness any system of thought whether prevailingly 
2 



18 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



positive or otherwise. Furthermore, he must ex- 
ercise his own impartial judgment as to the competency 
and admissibility of all testimony, pro or con, seeking 
admittance into the case. A skillful and adroit law- 
yer, charged with resorting to unprofessional ways 
and means to carry his point, declared that he was even 
willing to tell the truth to gain his case and clear his 
client. So does the author of these introductory re- 
marks confess his willingness to resort to the truth for 
the sake and glory of the truth. 

But what is truth? The question is in order at 
this time and very important in this age, so remark- 
able for the boldness of its philosophical inquiries, 
and the brilliancy of its startling achievements. The 
better class of daring adventurers, who are now at- 
tempting to pioneer their way into unexplored regions 
in the hope of finding the heart of God in the bosom 
of nature, are progressive conservatives. While they 
cherish respect and admiration for the good and great 
of the past, they are not willing to blindly build their 
creeds upon a truth-loving ancestry; neither are 
they ready to pin the broadening folds of their ex- 
panding faith to the narrow shrouds of dead theories, 
whose principal merit consists in plausible features 
and popular following. Such zeal is commendable. 
Such progress is approvable. Let such explorers move 
forward. They are going forward. Their numbers 
are increasing. Their faces are aglow with the ra- 
diance of scientific enthusiasm. Let the heroic van- 
guard roll back the shouts of new victories obtained 
along the advancing lines. 

But how are we to know beyond a reasonable doubt 



The Mercersburg Theology, 19 



that certain alleged scientific, philosophical and theo- 
logical solutions are founded in, and fortified by the 
truth? What sign showest thou that we may believe? 
Scientific discoveries are not to be despised and re- 
jected of men. Unanswerable logic is good to the 
extent that all the elements of its syllogism are im- 
bedded in those things which are unseen and eternal. 
The human reason may rest with a shallow sense of 
security in the inductions and deductions of a well 
informed and well poised intellect ; but the human heart, 
intoned as it is, with the music of the heavenly world, 
cannot rest absolutely secure and in calm repose, un- 
til it is pillowed upon that which lies within the veil 
and beyond the horizon of the visible universe. Shall 
we. not find such certitude in the Christian religion — 
the inspiration of the world's best thought, the re- 
sponse to its inmost yearnings, the nursery of its finest 
arts, the mother of its soundest philosophy, the cradle 
of all the sciences not falsely so-called, and the crown- 
ing glory of human personality? 

The fundamental mistake of much modern religious 
zeal for God, not according to requisite knowledge, 
springs from a morbid disposition to perform the func- 
tions of a judge instead of occupying the place of a 
disciple. Persons possessed of this malady may find 
their protagonist in Pontius Pilate. Truth is arraigned 
before the bar of an unqualified judge, tried upon a 
false issue and condemned upon testimony having no 
bearing upon the case. The Roman Governor has 
been embalmed in the infamy of his presumptuous 
cowardice, but the same line of false testimony and 
judicial incompetency, runs parallel with the history 



20 The Mercersburg Theology. 



of the world. Men sit in judgment upon the work of 
biblical scholarship, and the theory of evolution, while 
lacking the qualifications necessary to dissect a tad- 
pole. A charlatan will constitute himself a high court, 
and gown himself with the ermine of the bench to 
pass upon the researches of a Cuvier, the discoveries 
of a Huxley, or the scientific achievements of a Newton. 
A young religious enthusiast, scarcely out of the swadd- 
ling bands of a questionable birth, does not hesitate 
to draw his blue pencil across the most monumental 
work of enlarged and enriched Christian scholarship. 

Furthermore, it may be confidently asserted that 
the general public mind has no clear and adequate 
conception as to what truth is in its inmost essence, 
and as related' to its eternal source. The popular notion, 
that truth is nothing more than the correctness of an 
abstract proposition, or the soundness of a scientific 
or religious theory, is very far from being commensurate 
with the proper conception of that absolute and eternal 
verity, whose substance, if not unqualifiedly identical 
with, is at least inseparable from the being and essence 
of God himself. For this reason, truth could never 
have come down into the finite form of relative ex- 
istence without the incarnation of God and his con- 
sequent indwelling in the very bosom of such being 
as it culminates in man. And only after that great 
advent could the Absolute One announce himself, 
as the way ; the truth and the life for all whom the 
truth makes free indeed. 

It may, furthermore, be stated in advance that the 
reviewer will, as far as possible, let the Mercersburg 
Theology speak for itself. This will be done in the 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



21 



way of quotations from some of those who are supposed 
to have been among its fairest and most able represent- 
atives. By such is meant not only those who are 
accredited with having been primarily and prominently 
active in laying the foundation of the system, and in 
giving it shape during the formative period of its history, 
but also some of those, who through later decades of 
its years helped to develop its logical possibilities and 
defend it against the assaults of its enemies. Sporadic 
contributors to Mercersburg literature, however sound 
in the faith or meritorious in their contributions, may 
not be quoted as classed among its apostles. Neither 
should it be supposed that all those who are reck- 
oned among its advocates are in necessary agree- 
ment, as touching all the organic parts or essential 
elements of the system. A great deal has been written 
by some of its half-fledged disciples as Mercersburg 
teaching so far out of harmony with its cardinal prin- 
ciples and central trend of thought, as to be irrelevant 
and worthless as testimony in the case. 

It is not primarily the duty of the reviewer to sit 
in judgment upon the question as to whether the Mer- 
cersburg system of theology is right or wrong. The 
responsibility of such an exercise of judgment, he 
may assume upon certain points, if so disposed; but 
any such rendering of opinion will be regarded as the 
exercise of a personal right outside of the case strictly 
in hand. Mercersburg Theology has chosen and set 
up its standard. By that standard it must be judged, ■ 
and according to that standard, it must rise or fall. 
God said unto Moses: "And look that thou make 
them after the pattern which was shown thee in the 



22 The Mercersburg Theology. 



mount." Ex. 25:40. Moses was not responsible for 
the pattern, but for his own work according to that 
pattern. So if Mercersburg Theology claims to have 
received a pattern from the mount or a standard from 
the heavenly world, it is but right that its work should 
be judged according to the standard of its own adoption. 
It is, however, not reasonable to suppose that all the 
work performed down to date in the Mercersburg 
laboratory has shown its fundamental principle wrought 
out in all its details, as applicable to every branch of 
science with which theology stands correlated. 

Of course, it would be neither possible nor proper 
at this po'nt to state the primordial element or funda- 
mental principle supposed to underlie and govern 
the Mercersburg Theology. We are as yet only in 
the portico of the edifice, whose foundation and pro- 
portions we are presently to examine. It might not 
be proper for us even to take a peep through the window 
for the purpose of inspecting the finishings and fur- 
nishings of the palace. There has been too much of 
that kind of inspection in the past. Upon the one hand 
it has been criticised, and upon the other, commend- 
ed by men, who knew nothing more of its distinctive 
traits of character than what they had seen through 
a glass darkly. In the present examination it is 
proposed to enter the superstructure, survey the in- 
terior of the temple, and approach the altar where 
its mysteries are supposed to be shrined. 

In conclud ng these introductory remarks, as well 
as in anticipation of what is to follow, it may be stated 
that the apostles, disciples and intelligent adherents 
of Mercersburg Theology, as a distinctive system of 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



23 



thought, now about to be taken up for digest, never 
claimed to have more than partially apprehended its 
fundamental truths, and therefore looked for its full 
justification, only when that which is perfect is come. 
With such an explanation, with such an anchor of 
hope reaching into the veil of the future, they "all 
die in faith, not having received the promises, but 
having seen them, and having been persuaded of them, 
and having embraced them/' confidently record their 
cause in the chancery of heaven to await the decision 
at the bar of history. 



LECTURE II. 



Biographies of its Founders. 

In our introductory thoughts on the Mercersburg 
Theology we lingered for a while upon the port co 
of the temple, into which we are now about to enter. 
Passing its portal, we are to meet and make the ac- 
quaintance of some of its leading apostles, who will 
show us through the courts and conduct us to the altar 
where many good and great men have paid their de- 
votions to their distinctive apprehensions of the truth. 
True, they have gone to worship the absolute as per- 
sonified in the King immortal, invisible and full of 
glory, but they still speak and inform us as to what 
they began to do and teach, before they were delivered 
from the burden of the flesh. The following are the 
men who have been regarded as among the leading 
advocates and fairest representatives of the system, 
now coming under our consideration. The yare Dr. 
Frederick Augustus Rauch, Dr. Philip Schaff, Dr. John 
Williamson Nevin, Dr. John H. A. Bomberger, Dr. 
Moses Kieffer, Dr. Henry Harbaugh, Dr. Emanuel 
V. Gerhart, Dr. Thomas G. Appel, Dr. Elnathan E. 
Higbee, and Dr. William Rupp. With the exception 
of the first named of these distinguished men, it was 
our pleasure to have known and held either correspond- 

24 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



25 



ence or conversation with all of them during their 
lives and labors on earth. It is, however, through 
the pen-portraitures as drawn by others, rather than 
knowledge obtained by personal acquaintance, that 
the following sketches are produced. 

The Rev. Frederick Augustus Rauch was born in 
Kirchbracht, Hesse Darmstadt, on the 27th day of 
July, 1806; died at Mercersburg, Pa., March 1, 1841. 
He was the son of a Reformed minister. Although 
not born upon a battle-field, his birth occurred at a 
time when the bloody wars of Napoleon incarnadined 
the map of Europe and tinged the skies of" Germany 
with a sanguine hue. He was. graduated from the Uni- 
versity of Marburg, at the age of 21. The following 
year he entered upon professorial work in the Univer- 
sity of Giessen, and soon after accepted the professor- 
ship of philosophy at Heidelberg. At the latter place 
he enjoyed the congenial and beneficial company of 
that distinguished drill-master, Dr. Charles Daub, un- 
der whose plastic hand he received impressions as salu- 
tary as they were indelible upon the tablets of his 
character. Dr. Daub found in his colleague and pupil 
a receptive and fertile soil for the seed that afterward 
sprung up in the beneficent luxury of an abundant 
harvest. From the time of his birth to the maturity 
of his early manhood, Germany was a caldron of 
philosophical and political elements in seething com- 
motion. As a positive character, inspired with both 
the love of truth and the love of country, he taught his 
apprehensions of sociological obligations from his pro- 
fessorial chair, and heraliei his patriotic convections 



26 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



through the public press, in such a way as to disturb 
the tranquillity of those who were enthroned in arbi- 
trary power. Hence, as stated by Dr. Nevin, "It 
became necessary for him finally, in the judgment 
of his friends, to provide for his own safety, by a vol- 
untary self-expatriation. " He arrived in this country 
in the 26th } r ear of his age. During the next year, 
1832, he began teaching a classical school in connection 
with the Reformed Theological Seminary, then situated 
at York, Pa. During the same year, he was ordained 
as a minister in the Reformed Church, and in 1833, 
he was united in marriage to a Miss Moore of Morris- 
town, N. J., in whom he found a worthy companion. 
In 1835, he removed from York to Mercersburg, where 
the aforesaid classical school, under chartered author- 
ity, became Marshall College, in the founding and or- 
ganization of which Dr. Rauch became the first pres- 
ident. During the six years of his presidency of Mar- 
shall College and cotemporaneous occupancy of the 
chair of Biblical Literature in the Seminary, which 
had also been removed from York to Mercersburg, he 
did much of the scholastic work, which has since given 
him his well merited name and fame on history's page. 
Of his scientific works and other published volumes, we 
wi'J not speak in this connection, as they must neces- 
sarily be mentioned in some of the lectures in this 
course. Dr. Nevin, his colleague at Mercersburg, in 
a " Eulogy" delivered eighteen years after his death, 
upon the occasion of the removal of his remains from 
Mercersburg, and their re-interment at Lancaster, on 
the 8th day of March, 1856, said of him, "Called upon 
by the presence of these venerated relics, the image of 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



27 



the man is again before me, as I knew him so well, 
and loved him, during the last sad year of his life. 
His head prematurely bald ; his broad intellectual brow, 
his mild German eye; his generous, transparent, deep- 
ly sympathetic face; all are before me once more, in 
vivid picture, as I used to meet him in the intercourse 
of daily life. The inborn de icacy of his spirit, his 
keen gentlemanly sensibilit es, his absolutely irritable 
impatience with all that was dishonorable and mean, 
return upon me now like the music of Ossian, mourn- 
ful and yet pleasant to the soul. I see him in the 
bosom of his family; the center of all kindly affections, 
the soul of all generous hospitality, actualizing, as 
it might seem, in his relations to his own Phebe, the 
full sense of what he has so beautifully described in 
his Psychology, as the true ideal of marriage." 

Looking into the life and character of Dr. Rauch 
as portrayed by his cotemporaries, we see him as an 
ideal German scholar, a representative christian gen- 
tleman, and a profound christian philosopher, whose 
special field of speculative activity embraced, Ethics, 
Esthetics and Psychology — that most difficult task of 
scientific inquiry into the organic forces that move 
and the organic laws that govern the human soul in 
its relation to its source, itself and its surroundings. 

Rev. Philip Schaff, D.D., born in Coire, or Chur, 
Switzerland, Jan. 1, 1819, died October 20, 1893. 
After pursuing his course of study at Tubingen and 
Halle, he graduated at Berlin, 22 years of age. Soon 
after the death of Dr. R,auch, the Synod of the Re- 
formed Church convened and sent a committee to 



28 The Mercersburg Theology. 



Germany to secure a successor to that distinguished 
scholar and teacher. The committee, after its arrival 
in Germany, called upon and counseled with the learned 
and pious Dr. Frederick Krummacher, who recom- 
mended Philip S chaff, as the most promising of all the 
qualified and available men within the compass of his 
acquaintance. In response to the committee's in- 
vitation, the young Swiss scholar crossed the Atlantic 
for America in 1844. Before leaving his Fatherland, 
he was ordained at Ebberfeld in Prussia, and soon after 
his arrival in this country, was inducted into the chair 
of Church History and Exegetical Theology at Mer- 
cersburg. In his inaugural address, delivered at Read- 
ing, Pa., October 25, 1844, he discussed what he be- 
lieved to be the primary principles of genuine Protest- 
antism, and gave a forecast of his view respecting the 
true idea of the historic development of the Holy 
Catholic Church, as the embodiment of God's kingdom 
on earth. The address was subsequently amplified, 
translated into English, published in book form, and 
became the target of much criticism, from both German 
Rationalism and American Puritanism. 

In the very beginning of Dr. Schaff's professorial 
career in this country, he took up the work where the 
lamented Rauch had laid it down, giving it a more 
specifically historical and theological cast. The dis- 
tinctive characteristic of that work in general was the 
dissemination of a radically new apprehension of the 
old truth whose goings forth have been from of old, 
from everlasting. 

Strong in his rare natural abilities, broad in bis 
intellectual attainments, and rich in his ethical en- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



29 



dowments, Dr. Schaff was well qualified for the work 
to which he was led, and in which he was guided by 
that almighty hand that rules the winds and the waves 
of the world's tempestuous Gallilee. 

During the half century of his life in America, the 
field of his activity and usefulness enlarged itself in 
a manner corresponding with his expansive genius, 
Christian scholarship and growing zeal for the promo- 
tion of progressive truth. Besides filling theological 
chairs for more than forty years at Mercersburg, and 
at Union Seminary, New York, successively and suc- 
cessfully, he moved his pen in various branches of 
Christian literature until he became the author of many 
published works. Among these were, "The Sin 
Against the Holy Ghost;' 5 "James and the Brothers of 
Jesus;" "The Principles of Protestantism;" "History 
of the Apostolic Church;" "A German Hymnbook 
with Historical Introduction;" "The Overthrow of 
Slavery in America;" "A Vindication of the Idea of 
Historical Development ;" " Ancient Church History;" 
"America, its Political, Social and Religious Character;" 
"Germany, its Universities and Divines;" "The Moral 
Character of Christ;" "Christ in Song;" "The Vatican 
Decrees" and "History of the Creeds of Christendom." 

Dr. Schaff was also for a number of years the Editor 
of the Kirchen Freund, co-editor of the Mercersburg 
Review and of the American edition of Lange's Com- 
mentary. Furthermore, he was secretary of the Sab- 
bath Committee of New York, and of the American 
branch of the Evangelical Alliance, as well as president 
of the American committee on the revision of the 
English Bible. In all his providential assignments 



30 The Mercersburg Theology. 



on life's great stage, he played his part and played it 
well. His was a high order of that ordinary inspira- 
tion, under which holy men still speak and write as 
moved by the Holy Ghost. Under such divine illum- 
ination, the principle of his inspiration was his 
recognition and abiding consciousness of Christ's pre- 
sence in the church and in history. The reliability 
of his statements was guaranteed by his painstaking 
research after the truth, the consequent correctness 
of his knowledge, the maturity of his judgment and the 
sincerity of his heart. The forceful source of his met- 
aphors was in his lively imagination; the power of 
his rhetoric was in the purity of his diction and in the 
simplicity of his style. 

Rev. John Williamson Nevin, D.D., LL.D., was born 
in Franklin County, Pa., February 20, 1803. A child 
of Presbyter an parents, he was sent to Union College, 
New York, from which institution he was graduated in 
1821. He took his theological course in Princeton 
Seminary, graduating therefrom in 1826. Already 
in the year of his graduation his recognized scholas- 
tic and didactic attainments were such as to place him 
temporarily in the chair of Oriental and Biblical Lit- 
erature at Princeton. In 1828 the Presbytery of 
Carlisle licensed him to preach the Gospel, and or- 
dained him to the holy minstry. During the following 
year he was called to the Professorship of Biblical 
Literature in the Western Theological Seminary at 
Allegheny City, Pa. In 1840 he was elected Professor 
of Theology in the Seminary of the Reformed Church 
then recently located at Mercersburg. During the fol- 



The Mercers burg Theology. 



31 



lowing year, he became also the successor of the la- 
mented Dr. Rauch as President of Marshall College 
at the same place. In 1858, he resigned his position 
at Mercersburg, but continued to serve as president 
of Marshall College until that institution, in 1853, 
was removed to Lancaster and united with Franklin 
College, incorporating them under one charter as Frank- 
lin and Marshall College. After eight years of partial 
retirement and rest from professorial labor, he was 
again called into didactic service, and became Profes- 
sor of History and Esthetics in Franklin and Marshall 
College, and in 1866 became again its President, which 
position he held until 1876, when he passed into the 
well-merited rest of voluntary retirement. 

As an author Dr. Nevin was as fruitful in chris- 
tian literature as he was forceful in wielding his terse 
and trenchant pen. The same hand that extended 
the olive-branch and applied the balm of healing was 
powerful and effective in wielding the Damascan blade. 
Hence, the great variety of his literary productions. 
In 1828, he gave the public two volumes of his Biblical 
Antiquities. His firsu period cai, 1832. "The Friend," 
was largely devoted to the cause of civic righteousness. 
In 1843, he published a volume known as "The Anxious 
Bench," a treatise in exposure of fanaticism in religion. 
In 1816. his "Mystical Presence" began to attract 
attention in this country and in Europe as well. Dur- 
ing the following year he became the author of "The 
History and Genius of the Heidelberg Catechism." 
In 1848 he wrote and published "Antichrist or the 
Spirit of Sect and Schism." In 1849 he began to edit 
the Mercersburg Review, and continued for more than 



32 The Mercersburg Theology. 



thirty years to speak from its pages his apprehensions 
of the wonderful works of God. He discussed nearly 
all the leading theological questions involved in the 
nature and progress of God's kingdom on earth. 
Among the most rich and multum in parvo productions 
of his pen ; were his introduction to "SchafPs Prin- 
ciples of Protestantism," and his extensive introduc- 
tory to the Tercentinary edition of the Heidelberg Cat- 
echism in 1863. Some of his most mastodonean con- 
tributions were in discussion with Dr. Dorner of Ger- 
many over some vital questions of theology involved 
in the Mercersburg system of thought. In the multi- 
plicity and multiformity of his professorial and edit- 
orial duties Dr. Nevin was distinguished for his fidel- 
ity to the truth and the logical development of its 
principles. 

Dr. Bomberger said of him:* "No theological pro- 
fessor of this, or probably any other country, ever 
labored more faithfully and more indefatigably at his 
post than he; none ever better understood, or more 
deeply or solemnly realized the weight and value 01 
the va-t interests depending so largely upon the in- 
telligence, piety and fidelity of a theological professor. 
Keenly conscious of the great moral influence with 
which his office naturally invested him, especially in 
the church to which he had pledged his services, 
he cheerfully recognized the corresponding duty 
imposed by the possession of such influence. 
Occupying a high tower upon the walls of Zion, one 
from whose upper windows he could have an unob- 



*Mercersburg Review, 1853, pp. 90, 91, 92. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 33 



structed and comprehensive view of the wants and 
perils of the city spread out beneath, it was his duty, 
not simply to qualify others for being wise and faith- 
ful watchmen, but to be one himself." "His contri- 
butions have always been upon subjects of the highest 
theological moment, and such as were most intimately 
interwoven with the practical life of the church. And 
it may be remarked, by the way, that his treatment of 
the various themes thus discussed, and the palpable 
influence which they have exerted and are still exert- 
ing, Dr. Nevin has most effectively quashed the in- 
dictment for vapory idealism and misty transcendent- 
alism, which several prosecutors have preferred against 
him. He, therefore, takes with him to his retirement 
the most undoubted testimony of the church's con- 
tinued confidence and esteem, her cordial thanks for 
his past important and self-denying services and her 
sincere prayers that the Chief Shepherd may bestow 
upon him in abundant measure His richest blessings. 
This indeed, temporarily considered, may be a meager 
compensation for the services rendered. But it is the 
best the church can give. And we are confident that 
in Dr. Nevin's appreciation, its value will be above 
that of golden medals or of silver plate." 

Dr. Nevin was so fearfully and wonderfully made as 
to be a prodigy among the sons of men. The torch 
of his towering intellect seems to to have been kindled 
with fire from the heavenly altar. Nothing but per- 
sonified presumption would attempt to describe his 
worth or delineate the beauty of his character. A 
fair and full analysis of that character would show a 
mixture of all the elements essential to the constitu- 
3 



34 The Mercersburg Theology. 



tion of a great man. He was great in his emotions 
because his heart sought to throb in harmony with the 
heart that causes the moral universe to beat with or- 
ganic pulsations; he was great in his discursive and 
reasoning faculties because he constantly strove to 
have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus; he was 
great in the volitional side of his nature, because he 
chose the Lord from heaven as his supreme good and 
the source of his only comfort in life and death. Some 
men of his age were magnetic in their power to attract 
superficial minds. His was the magnetism which drew 
unto him men whose hearts yearned after the invis- 
ible, and whose minds were anxious to dive into the 
unfathomable, and drag up those truths that are not 
found floating upon the surface of popular shallow- 
ness. To our ordinary mind, he appeared like a fath- 
omless ocean, while his sublime and manifest christ- 
ian manhood seemed 

" Like the cerulean vaults we see 
Majestic in its own simplicity." 

In many respects he was a fit subject for translation 
to that invisible world and " better country" where 
the christian philosophers' dreams are realized in the 
rapturous visions of triumphant truth, and the rich 
possessions of imperishable glory. 

Rev. John Henry Augustus Bomberger, D.D., LL.D., 
was born in Lancaster, Pa., January 13, 1817. Died 
August 19, 1890. The successive steps in his academic 
course were taken in Lancaster Academy, the Re- 
formed High School at York, and Marshall College 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



35 



at Mercersburg, where he graduated in 1837, and com- 
pleted his theological course at the same place one 
year later. 

Dr. Bomberger's life work may be considered under 
the classification of preacher, teacher, writer, editor, 
and author. As a minister of the Gospel, he served 
in succession the following charges, viz: Lewistown, 
Waynesboro, Easton, Race Street Charge, Philadelphia, 
and St. Luke's Reformed Church, Montgomery County, 
Pa. In connection with his services in the afore- 
mentioned charges, he taught in a classical school at 
Lewistown and in a school of theology at Collegeville, 
Pa. His contributions to the Mercersburg Review, 
beginning with the first number in 1849, were among 
the most incisive of all the articles that have appeared 
in that Reformed Church Quarterly during the sixty 
years of its history. Perhaps his most able literary 
work was performed when his scholarly attainments 
were called into service in his translation and editing 
of "Kurtz's Hand-Book of Church History," and 
"Herzog's Encyclopedia." In 1868 he began to edit 
the Reformed Church Monthly, devoted to the defence 
of his apprehension of the Gospel and his own views 
of the traditions of the Reformed doctrines and cultus. 
When the discussion in the church had reached its 
more acute stage and the arena of the controversy had 
been broadened, the "Reformed Church Monthly" was 
discontinued in 1877 and the gifted editor was placed 
in charge of "the Reformed Church Monthly depart- 
ment, " of the " Christian World, " published at Dayton, 
Ohio. As author he did not give his works to the public 
so much in volumes of permanent form as in contro- 



36 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



versial tractates. His book on Infant Baptism and 
Salvation appeared in 1861. Dr. Emanuel V. Gerhart 
says of this book,* "We are pleased to see with what 
distinctness the author does not hesitate to state what 
he regards as the benefits which are secured by the 
blessings of God upon Infant Baptism to the parties 
concerned." 

Dr. Bomberger was the occasion and largely the 
source of the polemic literature touching Mercersburg 
theology as applied to the cultus of the Reformed 
Church. His right to dissent from the views of the 
majority of the members of the committee appointed by 
the Synod to draft a new liturgy, was generally con- 
ceded by his brethren ; but there was not such general 
approval of his course in organizing around himself a 
party in opposition to the regularly expressed will of the 
Synod. Such opposition and the organization of its ele- 
ments led up to the most significant and far-reaching 
act of his life in the founding of Ursinus College, with 
its theological department. It might not be considered 
proper for the author to speak in this connection of 
the wisdom of that movement. The Lord left his 
peace with his disciples. Let us. therefore, have peace. 
If the church has not yet realized the golden dream 
of the General Synod at Tiffin in 1881, it should not 
be forgotten that the key to the volume of uncertain 
sections of history is frequently found in its last chap- 
ter. Let brotherly love continue. 

Dr. Bomberger was broad in his intellectual attain- 
ments and brilliant in using them in the performance 
of duty as he understood it. He was magnanimous 

* Mercersburg Review, 1859, p. 311. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



37 



to those of like precious faith, and magnetic in the 
attraction of those who were moved by the magnificent 
manner of his statements. Exuberant in his imagina- 
tion, florid in his style and felicitous in his oratorical 
flights, he was as imperial with his pen as he was com- 
manding in the use of his powers as a public speaker. 
He was as ardently attached to his congenial friends 
as he was painfully polite to his opponents in the 
arena of theological combat; and never did he use his 
fine natural abilities and scholastic attainments for 
a better purpose or to a better advantage, than in his 
celebrated defence of Dr. Nevin against his antagonists. 
His own conception of the truth was truth for him, 
and right skillfully adroit was he in contending for 
its supremacy. 

Rev. Moses KiefTer, D.D. — Born in Franklin County, 
Pa., May 5, 1814; died February 3, 1888, in Sandusky, 
Ohio. He received his literary training at Marshall 
College, from which he graduated in 1838. The 
following year he completed his theological course in 
the Seminary at Mercersburg, Pa. During the same 
year of his graduation from Mercersburg, having re- 
ceived a call from the Huntington charge, he was or- 
dained to the Gospel ministry in the Reformed Church. 
Later he became a pastor of the Second Church, Read- 
ing, Pa. In 1855, he was elected by the Synod of the 
Reformed Church and adjacent states, convened in 
Xenia, Ohio, to become the successor of Dr. E. V. Ger- 
hart, Professor of Theology in Heidelberg Seminary, 
Tiffin, Ohio. This position he filled until 1867, when 
he resigned on account of failing health, and returned 



38 The Mercersburg Theology. 



to Pennsylvania. He was pastor of the Gettysburg 
Charge from 1870 to 1873. Later, he volunteered his 
services as a missionary, and went to the frontier, and 
raised the banner of the Reformed Church at Sioux 
City, Iowa, which field he served until he moved to 
Sandusky, where he laid down his pilgrim staff, and 
entered his heavenly home. 

It is still the writer's pride that for thirty years he 
enjoyed a full share of Dr. Kieffer's confidence and 
esteem. He recalls with pleasure his frequent in- 
vitations to the Professor's study for consultation in 
some matters under contemplation. Think of Tim- 
othy giving advice to Paul! Already in 1856, he had 
finished his translation of Dr. J. J. Ebrard's Dogmatic. 
Such work seems to have incited him to undertake 
the writing of a work on Systematic Theology in the 
English language. Some of the advance sheets of 
this undertaking he read to us, flattering our boyish 
pride by asking our opinion on certain points. Although 
that work was, for some reason, abandoned, our mutual 
esteem and confidence continued undiminshed as the 
years rolled by. When on his last bed of sickness, in 
1888, he sent a special message for the author to visit 
him. Arriving at Sandusky, the day before his death, 
he asked us to read over to him an article which he had 
prepared for the Reformed Church Quarterly on Prof. 
Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 
and to make any corrections seemed called for, say- 
ing he could no longer place confidence in his own 
judgment. We made a few unimportant suggestions 
and corrections, and at his request sent the paper to 



The Mercersburg Theology. 39 



the Editor of the Quarterly, who was pleased to give 
it room in the April number, 1888. 

Before we left him, we spoke of his only comfort and 
hope in life and in death, and reaching out his hand for 
our farewell departure, he repeated a part of one of 
the brief paragraphs of the above mentioned article: 
"The valley of death is indeed damp and gloomy, 
the grave is dreary and cold, and Sheol may be lo- 
cated on the borders of despair; yet of themselves 
they cannot extinguish the name of human life, and 
prevent us from entering the spiritual world, illumined 
by the immediate presence of the Lord God and the 
Lamb." After our departure, (as we learned) he 
said to his wife: "I will turn over and take a rest." 
He turned over and soon entered into that rest which 
remaineth for the people of God. In compliance with 
his request we returned and conducted the services 
at his funeral, and committed his body to the ground 
in the cemetery at Sandusky, Ohio. 

Dr. KiefTer was a christian gentleman of the old 
school, with his face ever turned toward the rising 
sun of the new. His endowments were above the 
ordinary and his ambition was laudable. As a theo- 
logian he was conservatively progressive. In his 
capacity as teacher, he was just speculative enough 
to incite his pupils to do a little thinking outside of 
raditional ruts and upon their own responsibility. 
His favorite motto was "Christ all in all." His order 
of Christological reasoning was first the Christ of 
Christianity; then the Christianity of Chirst. As a 
preacher he was incisive and instructive. Before an 
audience his bearing was dignified and reverential, 



40 The Mercersburg Theology. 



his voice as clear as a morning bell, his gesticulations 
natural and graceful, his modulation charming, his 
style more felicitous than florid, while his manifest 
consciousness of the omnipotence of the eternal and 
objective truth was the supreme element of his power 
in all his pulpit ministrations. 



LECTURE III. 
Biographies Continued. 

In the former lecture we were interested in the bio- 
graphical sketches of men who were numbered 
among the chief apostles of Mercersburg Theology — 
men who stood as god-fathers at its baptismal fount 
and guardians of its youth. Continuing, we now come 
to the task of delineating the characters of another 
group of men, who came ater to its advocacy, defence 
and development. Some of these were younger in 
years than the Apostolic Fathers who preceded them, 
and who were consequently called, at a later date, to 
meet new issues arising from the further logical work- 
ing out of the problems involved in the same general 
system of thought. This latter class were among those 
who watered what their predecessors had planted, and, 
perchance, pruned the plant of some of the branches 
not necessary to its proper growth and symmetry. 

Rev. Henry Harbaugh, D.D., was born near Waynes 
boro, Pa., October 28, 1817, and died at Mercers- 
burg, Pa., December 28, 1868. He received his ed- 
ucation at Marshall College, preparatory to his theo- 
logical course in Mercersburg Seminary. In 1843 he 
was ordained to the ministry of the gospel in the Re- 
formed Church, and served successfully and success- 

41 



42 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



ively as pastor of charges at Lewisburg, Lancaster 
and Lebanon, Pennsylvania. 

Besides faithfully performing his arduous duties 
as pastor of the above named churches for a period 
covering twenty years, Dr. Harbaugh was abundant 
in labors in other fields of educational activity and 
christian usefulness. For a score of years he was 
one of the most regular contributors to the pages of 
the church's literary and religious periodicals. During 
the last year of his life he was editor of the Mer- 
cersburg Review. He was also for many years the 
editor of "The Guardian" — a magazine devoted to 
the social, literary and religious interest of young men 
and ladies. As an author he was fruitful in the pro- 
duction of many and varied volumes. His works were 
a study for the learned and a source of wisdom for 
the people. He published three volumes of The Future 
State, viz., The Sainted Dead, The Heavenly Home 
and Heavenly Recognition. These were a rich source 
of consolation to christian pilgrims in this terrestrial 
valley of tears. His Life of Schlatter and two volumes 
of The Fathers of the Reformed Church, required of 
him great labor and painstaking research among the 
dusty archives and records of fragmentary history 
and apocryphal tradition. His Golden Censer — a 
book of prayer and meditation — was designed to 
cover all the varied experiences of the christian life. 
Following these were, The True Glory of Woman, a 
Book of Poems, The Birds of the Bible, Union with the 
Churcb, a Catechism for Children, Hymns and Chants, 
Youth in Earnest, and A Plea for Beautiful Churches. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 43 



As a sacred lyrist, he left some of the most inspiring 
hymns ever sung in the services of the church. 

During the twenty years of Dr. Harbaugh's work as 
a pastor, editor and author, he was passing through 
a school of discipline preparatory to the duties of a 
more responsible position in the church. As an apt 
student and a ripening scholar, he was prepared for 
the summons of the Synod to enter a more responsible 
position in the service of the church. In 1863 he was 
elected to the chair of Dogmatic and Practical Theology 
at Mercersburg. About the beginning of the year 
1864, Dr. Schaff having been granted temporary re- 
tirement from the chair of Church History, to visit 
Europe, Dr. Harbaugh was requested by the Board 
of Visitors to fill his place until his return. This po- 
sition he accepted and filled until Dr. SchafTs return 
from Europe, when Dr. Harbaugh devoted himself 
more exclusively to the work of the chair, to which 
he had been called by the Synod. In this position 
he spent nearly five years preparing young men for 
the ministry, and in drawing the outlines of a system 
of thought which he intended to develop more fully 
during the more mature age of his growing christian 
manhood. But alas! His sun went down at noon. 
The hopes of the church were disappointed; yet he 
did not lay down his work until he had stamped his 
age with an impress as indelible as it was inimitable. 
If he accomplished so much in the forenoon of his short 
day, how much more and better he might have wrought 
had his sun been permitted to pass from the apparent 
meridian of his life to the full maturity of his promising 
manhood. As it was, he bequeathed to the church 



44 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



a rich inheritance. Besides having lived himself into 
seme of the most important decades of her history, 
he left in manuscript a valuable forecast of what he 
had intended to develop more fully in the way of work- 
ing out his theology in a new christian mold. 

The writer recalls with melancholy pleasure and 
pardonable pride the very endearing, if not intimate 
relation that existed between this good great man and 
himself. Shortly after the meeting of the General 
Synod at Dayton, 1867, the learned Doctor, of his own 
accord, opened up a correspondence between us, which 
continued until he was stricken down by his last sick- 
ness. A few days before his death, Mrs. Harbaugh 
at his request wrote a letter with the information, that 
our communication to her husband was on his study 
table and would be answered as soon as he was able 
to sit up. May not that relation be renewed, and that 
letter be answered when and where there shall be no 
more death, neither sorrow nor crying? 

Dr. Harbaugh was as safe in his leadership as he 
was sane in the christian views he so consistently held, 
and sound in the theological principles he so logically 
developed. He always anchored his faith to the moor- 
ings of the old and tried, before he would allow his 
fancy to seek the shores of speculative novelities. His 
recognition of the Incarnate God in history stimulated 
his modestly sanguine temperament and gave buoyancy 
to his reasonable expectations. He was a man of strong 
convictions, and unassuming piety, tender-hearted, 
companionable, ardent in his friendship and pre- 
vailingly cheerful in his religious mood. These ex- 
cellent traits were truly predicable of him, because 



The Mercersburg Theology. 45 



the bed-rock of his character was an abiding conscious- 
ness that he was constantly overshadowed, uplifted, 
tenanted and surrounded by the powers of a heavenly 
and supernatural world. Such a sense of the super- 
natural, however, never disturbed or destroyed the 
normal endowments of his well poised personality. 
Among these, were originality, individuality and na- 
turalness. He spurned the silly attainments of empty 
affectation, as much as he despised sham and mechan- 
ical oratory. Although a child of God, he was still 
his own child (self), not the mere stage-echo or some 
other self. His new birth from above strengthened 
those home-born convictions of truth and right, which 
so intoned his whole being, as to make his life one sweet 
melodious song. 

Rev. Thomas Gilmore Apple, D.D., LL.D. — Born 
in Easton, Pa., November 14, 1829; died at Lancaster, 
Pa., September 17, 1898. After acquiring some rud- 
imentary elements of his education at Easton, he ma- 
triculated in Marshall College at Mercersburg, where 
he graduated with the honors of valedictorian in 1850. 
He studied theology at Mercersburg in connection with 
his collegiate course, and continued to be a devout and 
diligent student of that sacred science to the end of 
his life. After his licensure and ordination in 1851, 
he entered upon his ministerial duties as pastor 
of the Riegelsville charge. In 1855, he became pastor 
of the then newly organized Second Church of Greens- 
burg, Pa., which charge he served until 1858, when he 
was installed as minister at the Greencastle charge. 
Here he remained until 1865 when, being recognized 



46 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



as a rising teacher in Israel, he was called to the pres- 
idency of Mercersburg College, and afterwards, in 1871, 
advanced by a synodical election to the chair of Church 
History and New Testament Exegesis in the Theo- 
logical Seminary,, then recently removed from Mer- 
cersburg to Lancaster, Pa. In 1877, he was elected 
president of Franklin and Marshall College, which 
position he accepted and filled, in connection with his 
professorial work in the Seminary, until 18S9, when he 
resigned the said presidency in order to devote him- 
self more fully to the work of his position in the Sem- 
inary, which he held to the end of his life. 

Early in the last half of the nineteenth century, Dr. 
Apple began to make his apprehension of the eternal 
truth felt in the Reformed Church through the columns 
of the '''Reformed Church Messenger." Memory en- 
ables some of us to recall the pleasurable anticipation 
with which we watched and waited for his instructive 
and incisive contributions in each successive weekly is- 
sue of that periodical. As time rolled on and questions 
of vital moment arose for consideration and discussion 
he began to speak more frequently and forcibly through 
the pages of the Review. So fully had he identified 
and familiarized himself with the rising trend of theo- 
logical thought then commanding the attentive con- 
sideration of the church, that after the death of Dr. 
Harbaugh, 1868, his mantle as editor of the Quarterly 
logically fell upon Dr. Apple's shoulders; and right 
cheerfully did he take up the work and carry it forward 
for nearly thirty years. During all these years he gave 
no evidence of either a fainting heart or of faltering 
feet. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 47 



Besides discharging his multiplied and multiform 
duties as President of the College, Professor of Theo- 
logy and Editor of the Quarterly Review, Dr. Apple 
worked assiduously in many other responsible positions 
in which he was placed by the church he loved and serv- 
ed so well. He was a member of the Liturgical Commit- 
tee, Chairman of the Committee on the proposed union 
with the Reformed Church of America, a delegate of 
the session of the Alliance of Reformed Churches at 
Belfast in 1884, and again at London in 1888. He 
was also a member of the Peace Commission, and no 
one labored more conscientiously than he in that re- 
sponsible work, which he sincerely believed the Father 
had given him to perform. 

Dr. Apple was a man for whom his more intimate 
acquaintances were proud to cherish sentiments of 
respect and admiration. He was always tranquil and 
serene in his well-poised ethical and intellectual consti- 
tution as a scholarly christian gentleman. Though 
sometimes seemingly perturbed temporarily by his 
more adroit antagonist in debate, he always exhibited 
the rare ability to remain calm until he had fully re- 
covered h s equanimity in the consciousness of the 
truth and righteousness of his cause. On the floor of 
the Synod, in advocacy of the principles and policies 
of the church, he was regarded by many as the pole- 
star for less experienced navigators upon the squally 
sea of religious polemics. After Dr. J. Williamson 
Nevin had passed into the superannuated list of intel- 
lectual giants, Dr Apple was looked upon as bearing 
something like an oracular relation to the Mercersburg 
school of thought. He was regarded as a fair represent- 



48 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



ative and a safe leader, because he was recognized as 
thorough in his knowledge, considerate in his judgment, 
and conservative in his advance along the line of prog- 
ress. For these and other reasons, his views on ques- 
tions of christian philosophy were received with defer- 
ential regard by many who, for more than a quarter of a 
century, had watched the outgivings of his mighty 
pen and the unfolding of his symmetrical manhood. 
How imperial he seemed in his unassuming and unim- 
peachable piety as he stood upon the floor of the Gen- 
eral Synod at Tiffin in 1881, and plead that the com- 
promise report which had already been unanimously 
approved by the Commission, and which was then under 
prayerful Synodical consideration, might be adopted 
with such a hearty concurrence of all parties as to 
usher in the millennial dawn of the Reformed Church. 
His tongue seemed baptized with heavenly eloquence 
as he arose upon that memorable occasion amidst the 
ominous intimations of a minority purpose to prolong 
the war into the future: — "Mr. President, we of the 
majority have burned our bridges behind us with the 
sincere purpose of securing for our church an abiding 
peace, and as far as possible and desirable uniformity 
in cultus through all the years to come." 

As a writer and a speaker Dr. Apple aimed to ex- 
press himself and his thoughts in pure diction. He 
neither hampered himself nor bewildered his audience 
with a superfluity of words. He was too firmly ground- 
ed in the abiding consciousness of eternal truth to 
fritter his energy away in temporary flights of empty 
oratory. And for this reason he was truly eloquent. 
Technical terms were avoided as far as their omission 



The Mercersburg Theology. 49 



was consistent with a clear and full conveyance of the 
idea he aimed to express. His subLmity of diction 
was in the perspicuity, purity and precision of his 
style. By virtue of these qualities, his thoughts were 
made so clearly visible as to be effulgent and effective 
in leading those addressed to a beneficial appre- 
hension of the truth he aimed to promulgate. 

Rev. Elnathan Elisha Higbee, D. D., LL. D., was 
born near Burlington, Vermont, April 27, 1830, and 
was graduated from the University of Vermont in 1849. 
Soon a ter his graduation, he was called to Emmits- 
burg, Md., to take charge of the mathematical and 
classical department of a select school, organized and 
conducted by his brother-in-law, the Rev. Geo. W. 
Aughenbaugh, D.D., of that place. Coming into per- 
sonal touch with Drs. Nevin and Schaff, and into an 
acquaintance with the incisive literature which had 
issued from Marshall College and Mercersburg Sem- 
inary, he fell in with that distinctive trend of theo- 
logical thought, and in the course of time identified 
himself quite fully with the movement which had be- 
gun to attract and command many of the progressive 
intellects of the age. In the winter of 1851-2, he 
entered the Theological Seminary at Mercersburg. 
Upon his graduation therefrom, in 1854, Maryland 
Classis licensed him to preach the Gospel. After serv- 
ing a Congregational Church in Bethel, Vt., for a few 
years, he was called to the pastorate of the First Re- 
formed Church at Tiffin, Ohio, in 1858, and soon there- 
after was elected to the Professorship of Latin and 
Greek in Heidelberg College. In 1862 he was elected 
4 



50 The Mercersburg Theology. 



pastor of Grace Reformed Church, Pittsburgh, Pa., 
which position he accepted and filled until 1864. He 
was elected to the Professorship of Church History 
and Biblical Literature in Mercersburg Seminary, by 
the Synod of Lewisburg, in October, 1865, and to the 
Presidency of Mercersburg College in 1871, His 
last position as an educator was that of Superintendent 
of Public Instruction of Pennsylvaina, which he enter- 
ed into in 1880, and filled until his death in 1889. This 
last advancement was not so much a promotion as 
it was an enlargement of his field of activity and sphere 
of usefulness as one of the first educators of that great 
Commonwealth. 

The writer first met Mr. Higbee upon his arrival in 
Tiffin, September, 1858. Entering the pulpit, he open- 
ed the service and announced his text from I Cor. 
ii: 7-8, and read it with a baptism of elocution: "We 
speak of the wisdom of God in a mystery, which none 
of the princes of this world knew; for had they 
known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of 
Glory." It seemed to us as the first real reading of 
Scripture that we had ever heard. The Word had 
a new inspiration, and his inflections gave out a new 
revelation of truth. His modulations charmed the 
eager ears of his audience, and his exposition of the 
text stamped itself upon the hearts and minds of the 
congregation as a message of power from the heavenly 
world. 

The writer being then a member of the First Re- 
formed Church, and his father an elder m the congrega- 
tion at the time of Dr. Higbee's arrival in Tiffin, the 
door of our old home stood wide open with a warm 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



51 



welcome to our new pastor to enter our family circle. 
A recollect on of his visits, though fifty years ago, 
still opens the fountain of past endearments. He 
occupied a central and forceful position in the religious 
and social circle of our domestic joys. He even cul- 
tivated and called out the friendship of the family 
dog, and secured the frcil confidence of "Pen." This 
new acquaintance was turned to good account. Pen 
understood how to tree the wild turkeys then stdl 
roving through the forests lying off in the direction 
of the Wyandotte Indian Reserve; and Dr. Higbee 
understood Pen. Hence, during the following winter 
after snow had spread its white mantle upon the ground 
the Doctor came to borrow our dog and rifle for the 
exciting chase, and in mutual confidence they went to 
the happy hunting ground to seek, and perchance 
to capture, a specimen of that elusive bird, which in 
the Doctor's estimation was made but a little lower 
than the American Eagle. 

Whilst Dr. Higbee had little love for childishness, 
he was filled with admiration for whatever was child- 
like. Indeed, he was intensely enthusiastic for all 
that was good and true and beautiful in the simplicity 
of character. He regarded it as no condescension to 
mingle with the boys and take part in the sports of 
children. This he had the happy faculty of doing 
without lowering the standard of ministerial dignity 
and duty. For affected piety and scholastic pedantry 
he had nothing but supreme commiseration. He in- 
sisted that nature should be permitted to speak in her 
own vernacular tongue. With his ear pressed to Na- 
ture's bosom, he was ever waiting and watching to hear 



52 The Mercersburg Theology. 



all the throbbings of her heart. His pupils soon observ- 
ed that distinguishing trait in his character, and some 
of them unconsciously began to acquire the habits of 
their great teacher. Versatility summarized his dis- 
tinctive endowments. During the same day he would 
drill his class in the reading of the classics, take them 
along the banks of Rock Run and teach them the habits 
of the turtle, then back to the college to entertain and 
edify them with one of his inimitable readings trom 
Shakespeare, and meet them again in the evening in 
the prayer-meeting, when he would supplement the 
services with a lecture on the organic unity of the 
Apostles' Creed. 

In short Dr. Higbee was simply broad and brilliant 
in his natural endowments. He ranked second to 
few in the great field of education. His sympathy of 
heart, his culture of mind and his loftiness of spirit 
were among the elements of enrichment in the won- 
derful constitution of his personality. Among the 
poets, he was more classic than versatile, and yet the 
effusions of his prolific imagination covered a broad 
field of fantasy, extending from an "Ode to an Owl," 
to his "O'er the Grave Victorious." Crowning all, 
were the positively christian elements of a character 
constitutionally destined to outlive the stars in dura- 
tion and outshine the sun in all the glory of his mer- 
idian blaze. 

Rev. Emanuel Vogel Gerhart, D.D., LL.D., was 
born at Freeburg, Pa., June 13, 1817, and departed 
this life May 6, 1904. His educational training for 
the work to which, in the providence of God, he was 



The Mercersburg Theology. 53 



called, began at York, Pa., and continued at Mercers- 
burg, where he graduated from Marshall College in 
1838, and from the Theological Seminary in 1841. 
In 1842 he was ordained to the Gospel ministry. As 
pastor, he served successively charges in Franklin 
County, Pa., Gettysburg, Pa., and Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Soon after the founding of Heidelberg College, Tiffin, 
Ohio, 1850, Dr. Gerhart was called to the presidency 
of that institution, and to the chair of Systematic 
Theology in the Seminary connected therewith. Here 
he gave a demonstrated forecast of his future success 
as a christian educator. The writer well remembers 
seeing him in the fall of 1852 as he appeared by invi- 
tation before the teachers of Seneca County, deliver- 
ing a lecture on logic. He stood before his audience 
of young pedagagues as a dignified Syllogism in whom 
there was no room for sophistry. In 1855 he was called 
to become president of Franklin and Marshall College, 
and was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. Thir- 
teen years later at a special meeting of the Synod of 
the Reformed Church, convened at Harrisburg, Pa., 
March 3, 1868, he was elected Professor of Didactic 
and Practical Theology in Mercersburg Theological 
Seminary at Mercersburg, Pa., which position he ac- 
cepted and filled, until in 1871 he returned with the 
Seminary to Lancaster, Pa., in which he served the 
Church until the end of his life. 

Besides serving his generation as a preacher, pastor 
and a teacher, Dr. Gerhart gave further evidence of 
his versatility in Christian scholarship as writer, editor 
and author. Beginning with Vol. 3 of the Mercers- 
burg Review, 1851, the contributions of his pen gave 



54 The Mercersburg Theology. 



enrichment to its pages through the remarkable period 
of fifty-two years. For a number of years he was 
associated with Dr. Philip Schaff as co-editor of the 
Review. His sixty-two years as a minister of Christ, 
and his fifty-three years as a christian educator, con- 
tinued without interruption until the day he fell 
asleep in Him whose person was the ground of his faith 
and the star of his hope. 

The productions of Dr. Gerhart's pen as an author 
are not found so much in the form of facile, florid 
folios, as in his rich fruits of labor, logic and love. The 
Alpha in the alphabet of his literary life is, An Intro- 
duction to the Study of Philosophy: with an Outline 
Treatise on Logic, 1859. As such it seems to have 
sounded out, in the way of an anticipation, the Omega 
in the form of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, 
1891, — a work that stamped itself upon his own age 
as a very valuable recast of the old theologies, a christ- 
ological treatise that will occupy a well merited place 
in the world's great library as long as theological lit- 
erature has a mission on the earth and appreciation 
among scholarly men. 

Dr. Gerhart belonged to the battalion of heavy in- 
fantry in that invincible phalanx of moral and intel- 
lectual giants who battle for truth and righteousness. 
He was so constituted by nature, reconstituted by 
grace and encompassed by the environments of the 
system of thought in which he stood, that he would 
have been entirely out of place in the flying artillery 
of spasmodic emotionalism so peculiar to the age in 
which he lived. He was emphatically a logician. As 
such, he began the construction of his syllogism by 



The Mercersburg Theology. 55 



the assumption of a truth whose obviousness placed 
it in the category of axiomatic verities. Thence, he 
proceeded step by step, in an exactness of statement 
and scientific process of reasoning, until the correctness 
of his assumption was confirmed and glorified in the 
soundness of the conclusion reached. If at times he 
seemed tedious and unnecessarily formal in his state- 
ments, it was only to the pupil who was impatiently 
anxious to reap where nothing had been sown. This 
method of unfolding the truth o f his propositions and 
of imparting the instruction included in and aimed at 
in his purpose, frequently placed him at a seeming 
disadvantage before an audience and in an age that 
emphasized the importance of speed at any cost. The 
writer recalls the occasion of Dr. Gerhart's address 
on "The Proper Incentive to Foreign Missions, " at 
the Council of the Alliance of Reformed Churches in 
Glasgow, Scotland, 1896. Standing on the floor of 
St. Andrew's Hall, surrounded by pious and scholarly 
men from all parts of the earth, he consumed his ten 
minutes in laying down his intorductory proposition 
preliminary to his intended argument, only to be called 
down by the expiration of his allotted time, amidst 
the manifest regret of many, who were anxious to 
hear him in the development of his argument. He sat 
down without evincing any perturbation of mind. A 
different type of man would have avoided such an 
occasion of embarassment by plunging into some- 
thing like the semblance of an argument in such a way 
as to neither touch a major proposition or reach a 
sound conclusion. 



56 The Mercersburg Theology. 



Dr. Gerhart was cautious in taking his position, 
diligent in searching for facts, precise in the making 
of his statements, deliberate in weighing the issue and 
calm in the consciousness that his conclusions were 
sound. If he was seemingly slow in his methodical 
movements, he was all the more sure to arrive at the 
goal of his purpose. To reach the end in view, he em- 
ployed all his powers of heart and mind and will. 
These powers he cultivated on a line parallel with the 
development of his symmetrical character. He spared 
no pains to make all his mental and moral resources 
tributary to the accomplishment of his noble work. 
His whole being was so intoned with the music of the 
heavenly world as to spur his ambition to make his 
life an antiphone of that heavenly power which over- 
shadowed him in this world, and by which he lovingly 
and logically stepped into the skies. 

Rev. William Rupp, D.D., was born in Lehigh Coun- 
ty, Pa., April 17, 1839, and died April 3, 1904. He 
graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1862, 
and two years later from the Theological Seminary at 
Mercersburg. He was ordained to the Gospel ministry 
by Lebanon Classis in February, 1865, and installed 
as pastor of the St. Clair Charge, Pa. He afterwards 
served the Berlin charge, Somerset County, Pa., the 
Manchester Charge in Maryland and the Myersdale 
Charge, Pa., covering in all a period of twenty-eight 
years of pastoral work. In 1893 he was elected by 
the Pittsburgh Synod to the chair of Practical Theo- 
logy in the Seminary at Lancaster. That position 
he accepted, filled and held until his death. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



57 



For one-third of a century, Dr. Rupp was interested 
in the Review, either as contributor or editor. In 
taking charge thereof, as its editor in 1897, and in the 
restatement of its purpose and mission in the church 
and in the world, he also gave an exponential state- 
ment of his own Christological position in the follow- 
ing language: "By claiming for it the quality of 
being Christological we mean that it has taken Christ 
as the illuminative center of divine or revealed truth. 
It is not merely a theology that has Christ in it as a 
subordinate element, but a theology which contains 
Him as its central organizing principle. The Review 
has taken its position in the idea of Christ, and has 
viewed every truth in the light of that idea. Christ 
has revealed God, and has viewed every truth in the 
light of that idea. Christ has revealed God, nay, is 
revealing him now in and through the christian con- 
sciousness of the Church; and whatever is in harmony 
with the revelation of the Christ that is divine truth, 
and whatever contradicts that revelation is error and 
falsehood." 

To the aforementioned principle Dr. Rupp was 
loyal all the years of his life. Such loyalty, however, 
was always insistent upon moving in the element of 
proper freedom. Although a legitimate and well- 
nurtured child of Mercersburg Theology, a firm believer 
in its fundamental tenets and a courageous defender 
of its claims, he did not regard himself as slavishly 
bound to accept it in toto as his real unalterable stand- 
ard of faith. Consistency compelled him to contend 
that no age of the church or decade of years had in- 



58 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



fallible authority over all following decades or ages 
in the historic onflow of a progressive Christendom. 

No legitimate son of Mercersburg Theology, or true 
descendant and successor of its apostolic fathers, 
will allow himself to be robbed of his inheritance by 
the charge of its superficial critics that its original 
position has been radically abandoned. Legitimate 
progress in the way of development is no abandonment 
of what was originally involved in its primordial 
principle of truth. Dr. Rupp was second to no Mer- 
cersburg student in his disposition and ability to keep 
pace with such legitimate progress. 

Perhaps no disciple in this distinctive school of 
thought was more disposed than he to do some think- 
ing upon his own responsibility. He thought what 
he said and said what he thought. As a philosophical 
evangelist and an evangelical philosopher, he was al- 
ways ready to give a reason for the position he occu- 
pied and the principles that he advocated. This he 
could do with ability, as well as with meekness, be- 
cause he had quite fully informed himself as to the 
positions held by other men and other schools in all the 
ages past. He had traversed the fields of philosophi- 
cal speculation from Plato to Spinoza ; he had measured 
the fruitless flights of German transcendentalism; he 
had waded and wept through Schopenhauer's pess- 
imistic slough of despond; he had become disgusted 
with Fichte's doctrine of the Ego; he had drawn his 
own blue pencil across the page of absolute idealism; 
he felt that emptiness of Roscillin's nominalism; his 
soul had sickened and saddened over the ecclesisatic 
tyranny that sits enthroned upon the banks of the Ti- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 59 



ber, and his yearning heart had found such poor con- 
solution in the husks of Calvinistic metaphysics, 
that he turned to the man of Galilee to learn that ac- 
cording to the true philosophy of the absolute, the mo- 
ral universe involves a tremendous problem, and that 
human life is a grand reality. As he here poised 
himself amidst the storms of the world's tempestuous 
sea, he was so fully engaged in his strenuous efforts 
to solve the more profound and prosy problems of 
life as to leave no room in his soul for mere sentiment 
and poetry. 

Dr. Rupp was a man of faith mixed with common 
sense. He was too much a metaphysician to attempt 
a clear distinction and wide separation between faith 
and regenerated reason. His conception of the genesis 
of faith was that it was wrought in — not into — the 
receptive heart by the preaching of the Gospel, which 
under his view, was nothing more nor less than a self- 
revelation of Christ as the light of life shining in and 
through the kingdom of God at hand and present in 
the Holy Catholic Church. Though walking by faith 
he held and maintained that it was the Christian's 
most reasonable service to exercise his regenerated 
reason in searching after the deep things of God. He 
was rational without being rationalistic. Thus en- 
dowed, he sought to rationalize some of the irrational 
theories of religion, so pretentiously pious in their 
infidelity. Such an undertaking was too wonderful 
for some of his brethren, whose wings were too feather- 
less to follow him in his more sublime nights of 
ratiocination. 

To the broad and analytic mind Dr. Rupp's teach- 



60 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



ing evinced a harmony between all the parts there- 
of. If his later writings differed from the earlier 
productions of his pen, the change involved no real 
contradiction. He was as consistent with himself, 
as he was persistent in his contention that there is 
progress in the revelation of truth. As a true dis- 
ciple thereof, he did not believe that the Mercersburg 
Theology had fixed a standard of thinking for all the 
time to come. His seeming change of position was 
rather a logical progress from the bud, through the 
blossom, to the rich ripe fruit at the end of the organ- 
ic process. His was 

"A mind rejoicing in the light 

Which melted through the graceful bower, 
Leaf after leaf serenely bright 
And stainless in its holy white 

Unfolding like a morning flower." 



LECTURE IV. 



Mercersburg Philosophy. 

All great and worthy world movements imply ne- 
cessity, involve principle, and bear the impress of per- 
sonality. Necessity is the occasion, principle the 
dynamic power, and personality the plastic influence. 
The Mercersburg movement was conceived in necess- 
ity, evolved from a distinctive principle, and entered 
upon its development and mission under the fostering 
care of the master minds who stamped it with the 
die of their own personalities. In former lectures we 
attempted the pen-portraitures of the men whose plas- 
tic hands gave direction to the movement now under 
consideration. In this lecture we shall speak of the 
necessity in which it was conceived and of the philoso- 
phic principle of which it was born as a distinctive sys- 
tem of theological thought. 

Over three thousand years ago necessity opened 
the way for the norm of divine law to assume a sta- 
tutory form under the stamp of a personal human 
impress which has outlived the fleeting centuries. 
Nineteen hundred years ago man's extremity was God's 
opportunity to send a revelation of truth and grace 
in the person of Him, who is the express image of the 
Father, and who stamped that revelation with his own 

61 



62 The Mercersburg Theology. 



unique personality. Sixteen centuries ago the Christ- 
ological cJash and confusion of the patristic age gave 
birth to a trinitarian formula so obviously impressed 
with the Athanasian stamp as to be the sign and seal 
of orthodoxy through all the stormy years that have 
since rolled away. Seven hundred years ago King 
John's despotic authority became intolerable, the 
"Great Charter" of liberty was born and Runnymede 
became a waymark in the history of the world. Four 
hundred years ago the fulness of the time had come 
for the 16th century epoch, and the movement, ani- 
mated by the Protestant principle and guided by a 
hand divine, received the manifest and multiform im- 
press of human personalities. One hundred and thirty 
years ago, the intolerable yoke of foreign oppression 
made it necessary for one nation to dissolve the 
political bands that bound it to another and fling the 
Declaration of Independence to the breeze of popular 
sovereignity. And seventy years ago there was a 
necessitous occasion for the great Christological 
movement which began at Mercersburg as a system 
of thought, answerable to the aching void in the relig- 
ious thought! ulness and thoughtlessness of the age. 

The general condition of the world during the latter 
part of the first half of the 19th century, was such as 
to fill the observant and discerning christian mind 
with disquietude, anxiety and alarm. Religious, so- 
cial, political and philosophical elements were lashing 
themselves and each other into the fury of ominous 
commotion. From the sunrise of the Orient to the 
sunset of the Occident the world was either a pool of 
stagnation or a seething caldron of restlessness and 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



63 



revolution. The oscillations of the religious pendulum 
were between traditionalism on the one hand and rad- 
icalism upon the other; and such traditionalism was 
no longer confined to the pent up Utica of the Romish 
Church. The dynasties of Europe either trembled 
on their despotic thrones or tottered before the up- 
risings of their rebellious subjects. Colambia had 
broadened the arena of the world's most progressive 
activity from the Mor.rezumian temples of the South 
to the storm-path of the North. Westward the star 
of empire had made its way, from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific, to appear upon time's last stage for time's 
last play. Social and religious convulsions were felt 
and feared from Cancer to Capricorn. The tendency 
toward Bibliolatry in some sections of Protestantism 
may or may not have provoked the Church of Rome 
to renew her devotions to the Maryolatry of the Mid- 
dle Ages. Attracted by some mysterious affinity, 
Oxford and the Vatican were passing through a period 
of ecclesiastical flirtations, looking to something like a 
semblance of a union between the two. Protestant- 
ism with her superior form of Christianity was uncon- 
cious of the diseases that were preying upon her vitals 
and threatening the foundations of her strength. Trac- 
tarianism in England proposed to start the church 
anew upon the foundation of primitive Christianity. 
St. Pusey sought to supplant St. Peter. Puritanism 
in America imagined that Plymouth Rock was the 
Rock of Ages, while it remained unconscious of the 
fact that it was being washed away by the waves of 
Unitarianism. Universalism and a swarm of sects 
appeared as numerous and as pestiferous as the frogs 



64 The Mercersburg Theology. 



in the land of Egypt. The theology of unbelief was 
taking the place of the faith once delivered to the saints. 
The apostles of rationalism were denying that the man 
of Galilee was more than a virtuous hero in the tragedy 
of human life. Strauss, Feuerbach, Renan and Bauer 
denied the supernatural element in the constitution 
of Christianity. William Ellery Channing, and his 
new school of old Arianism sought to take the crown 
of divinity from the head that 'was once crowned with 
thorns; and the fanaticism of false revivalism was 
sweeping over the face of the American continent with 
a zeal for God, but with little knowledge of Him whom 
God had sent. 

While this negative preparation for something better 
was going on throughout the world, Germany was at 
work, as usual, turning out her philosophers and phil- 
osophies ; and it may be added in this connection, that 
the period of time under consideration in the last para- 
graph was more than ordinarily productive of specula- 
tive philosophic theories. These theories covered a 
range as wide as the distance between the most pro- 
found divings of Teutonic acumen to the highest nights 
of its daring transcendentalism. It is noteworthy 
that Schleiermacher, Schelling, Hegel, Herder, Kant 
and Fichte were all born within the same half century 
of years, and that they were all either alive or in the 
noontide of their posthumous influence while Napo- 
leon was on his march from Corsica to St. Helena. 
Was there nothing providential and remarkably coin- 
cidental in the fact that the incisive writings of this 
stellar cluster of great men appeared above the hor- 
izon of incarnadined Europe at a time when the people 



The Mercersburg Theology. 65 



would be most disposed to look for something more 
responsive to the yearning heart of man and more 
enduring than the ephemeral flashes of political em- 
pire? Furthermore, is it not worthy of note that 
Frederick Augustus Ranch was born just as Bonaparte 
was marching from the zenith of his military glory at 
Austerl tz to the going down of his sun at Waterloo, 
and while Hegel was writing his " Phenomenology," 
in anticipation of his "Logic, " in which he seems to 
have identified all being with thought, projecting that 
profound, yet hazy system of " absolute idealism," 
which for one hundred years has been the bone of 
much contention among learned men — and other men 
whose erudition consisted largely in prejudice and pre- 
sumption. 

When the pious and scholarly young philosopher, 
Dr. Frederick Augustus Ranch, came from Germany to 
America in 1835, he brought with him the courage 
of a great man who dared to follow the leadings of 
great thoughts. Nine years later, 1844, came Dr. 
Philip Schaff. During these years, Schleiermacher, 
Schelling and Hegel were yet alive. They had, there- 
fore, an opportunity to see Europe's philosophical spec- 
ulation pass through the fires of criticism in the home- 
land. Schaff was an admiring disciple of Schleiermach- 
er, yet knew how to seize the truth wherever found, and 
to filter its waters from that ruinous rationalism and 
pantheism which so largely infected the most masterly 
productions of the Hegelian age. These two young 
Germans brought with them seed-thoughts enough to 
plant a continent. Dr. Rauch's philosophy first crop- 
ped out in the form of his immortal work on psychology, 
5 



66 The Mercersburg Theology. 



and had his sun not gone down before noon, would 
doubtless have borne more fragrant fruit in his con- 
templated and partially prepared book on Christian 
Ethics. Dr. SchafTs theology and history grounded 
themselves in that truly philosophical view of the 
moral universe, which recognizes the organic unity 
of all its parts: 

"One God, one law, one element 
One far away divine event 
Toward which the whole creation moves." 

During and prior to the time of the transmigration 
of Rauch and S chaff from Europe to America with their 
valuable philosophic principles and lofty ideals of 
truth, Dr. John Williamson Nevin was undergoing 
a voluntary transplantation, root and branch, from 
the old and time-worn Calvinistic system to the Ger- 
man Reformed Church which at that time had no 
distinctive theological system of any kind. Though 
then unconscious of his great mission, he was the man 
ordained of God to cry in the wilderness of Puritanic 
abstractions, Romish usurpations and rationalistic 
abominations, " Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make 
his paths straight." If "Rauch and Schaff were 
the first important bridge-builders between the Ger- 
man and American thought-world" (Prof. Schiedt), 
Dr. Nevin was the peerless pier upon which the span- 
ning superstructure found its first American support. 
The history of the last seventy years makes obvious 
the fact that he was the divinely appointed committee 
to receive these Teutonic champions of newly appre- 
hended truth upon their arrival in the western world, 



The Mercersburg Theology. 67 



welcome them to our shores, water the seed which 
they came to plant in American soil, develop the germ- 
principle of that seed in Anglo-American life, culti- 
vate the plant mco symmetrical unfoJaings, and apply 
the leaves thereof for the healing of the nations. 

Dr. Bomberger in his very favorable notice of Dr. 
Gerhart's work on "The Study of Philosophy with 
an Outline Treatise on Logic," says (Mercersburg 
Review, 1859, pp. 93, 95, 105): The success of Dr. 
Rauch in transplanting to American soil, and ac- 
climatizing here the choicest fruits of the best Ger- 
man schools of philosophy, as well as the improvement 
of the transplantations, by skillfully combining with 
them everything susceptible and worthy of appropri- 
ation from English systems, excited general admiration. 
The high position taken at its start, in metaphysical 
studies, was fully sustained and very ably developed 
by the second President, Dr. Nevin, who strengthened 
the foundations previously laid and consolidated, 
beautified and carried forward the superstructure, 
which had been reared thereon." 

This transplantation of German thought to America 
became the occasion of much bitter persecution and 
abuse of men, who were either actors in, or sympath- 
izers with the movement. Dr. Rauch had scarcely 
passed to the heavenly world where the terrestrial 
dreams of the christian philosopher are realized in 
heavenly vision, before there was an incipient opposi- 
tion to the new philosophy. There was, however, 
not much hostile demonstration until the winter of 
1844-5, when Dr. Schaff was made the target of un- 



68 The Mercersbtjrg Theology. 



charitable criticism. The flood-gates of merciless 
maledictions were first opened by his own countrymen. 
Under one view he had come to his own, and his own 
received him not. German rationalists hated him 
because he emphasized the necessity of supernatural 
elements in the religion that saves the world from sin 
and completes humanity in the fulness of a higher 
life. American Puritanism criticised him because he 
held that Protestantism could do a little sweeping be- 
fore its own door, and because he was reputed a 
cloud-climber in some of his theories. Some of the 
pietistic newspapers of the country made him famous 
among superficial men, who knew no more of the great 
historian than did the editors of those periodicals. The 
New York Observer of April, 1848, characterized Dr. 
Schaff's teachings respecting the person of Christ as 
"German transcendentalism." All the Herods in the 
tetrarchy of old Jerusalem sought the young child's 
life to destroy it. The fires of persecution were kindled 
in all the most combustible parts of false Protestant- 
ism. Schaff's " Principle of Protestantism" provoked 
Dr. Berg to cast a naming brand into the German Re- 
formed Church because its author had been elected to 
a professorship in her theological seminary. Dr. Nevin 
was charged with being a participant in the crime, be- 
cause he had translated the book with notations of ap- 
proval, and because he did not agree with Dr. Berg and 
others that Protestantism, as it then stood in its Puri- 
tanic form, was the very pink of religious perfection, 
and that Rome was nothing more or better than the 
mother of harlots. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



69 



Some germs of sound philosophy 

Were brought across the ocean wide, 
Applied to our theology, 

To make its soil more fructified. 
At Mercersburg the seed was sown, 
The crop well watered— partly grown. 

From Mercersburg the movement spread 

On wings of life and light, to sound 
The archangel's trump, and wake the dead 
In Christ-less orthodoxy found, 

Till Plymouth Rock — in nasal-tones — 
Spake from the valley of dry bones. 

These critics ranged in questionable competency 
all the way from the uneducated up to the man who 
was fortunate enough to become the husband of Harriet 
Elizabeth Beecher. Prof. Stowe was a graduate from, 
and for a time, occupied a chair in Andover Theo- 
logical Seminary, an institution which was already 
then as destitute of positive theological principles as 
it is now destitute of theological students. He did 
not directly criticise Mercersburg Philosophy, but 
in the Biblical Repository, 1845, after telling the pub- 
lic that he had "waded through" Hegel's works, and 
confessing that he could not tell "what the man means 
by anything he says in all his writings," (requoted 
from Dr. Schaff) criticised what he was pleased to call 
"Teutonic Metaphysics or Modern Transcendental- 
ism," in such a majestic way that Dr. Schaff felt it 
to be his duty to reply in a later edition of his Prin- 
ciples of Protestantism, pp. 149, 150, 151. 

Replying to the above, Dr. Schaff said in part, (and 
it is hoped that the extracts will not be regarded as 
garbled): "Speak as man may against German trans- 



70 The Mercersburg Theology. 

cendentalisni, as the word passes here in a wholesale 
way, this at least no one acquainted with the subject 
can deny that at the very time when the most cele- 
brated theologians cast away the cardinal evangelical 
doctrines of the incarnation and atonement as anti- 
quated superstitions, Schelling and Hegel stood forth 
in their defence. I am truly sorry to find myself dis- 
appointed in Dr. Stowe. In view only of his relations 
to my honored instructor and friend Dr. Dorner, now 
counselor of Consistory and Professor of Theology 
at Koenigsberg, I held him capable of understanding 
and appreciating the German philosophy and theo- 
logy, much beyond what he has shown in this unfor- 
tunate article. It is not in my mind at all to under- 
take a wholesale defence of any system of German phil- 
osophy as such; for I prize too much the liberty of 
thought to be bound by any philosophical school, 
and yield my reason to be held only by the Bible. 
But men like Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, 
who have devoted their whole lives to the most labor- 
ious and profound inquiries, and who beyond all ques- 
tion belong to the greatest names in the history of the 
world, should be treated in different style by such a 
man as Stowe." "What a man by his own con- 
fession does not comprehend, it might be as well 
perhaps that he should not undertake to explain.' ' 
Especially so where, as in the present instance, the 
explanation is expected to carry with it a sort of " offi- 
cial authority" for the general public. Hegel has 
errors and sins to answer for, no doubt. But this is 
no reason why he should be loaded with misrepresenta- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 71 



tion, and made to appear little better than a fool at 
the bar of the common understanding." 

Criticisms of Mercersburg Philosophy in later years 
and at the present day are often very different in 
their nature and purpose from those axes that were 
at first so uncharitably laid at the root of the tree. 
While the critics profess zeal for the purity of the Gos- 
pel and the majesty of the truth, they are now too 
frequently inspired by an ulterior motive to found and 
maintain schools of theology in opposition to all posi- 
tive teachings. Such opposition often conceived in 
the unhallowed womb of disappointed ambition, has 
many charges in its indictments. Mercersburg Phil- 
osophy is accused of Romanizing and ritualistic ten- 
dencies, rationalism, pantheism, and all the other sins 
mentioned in the catalogue of scholastic crime; and 
too generally these accusations are founded in narrow 
prejudice and inexcusable ignorance. Only recently 
an innocent young professor in an institution beneath 
the setting sun asked of the writer, whether the " Ritch- 
lism" taught at Lancaster is the same as that advocat- 
ed in the " Order of Worship." 

But what is Mercersburg Philosophy? What are 
its peculiar tenets of doctrine or its distinctive traits 
of character? Hitherto we have only been walking 
around the system; and in these circumambulations 
we have not been sufficiently observant to mark well 
its bulwarks, consider carefully its palaces, and tell 
all the towers thereof. Passing its portals, we cau- 
tiously survey the general outlines of the interior as 
we endeavor to approach its most holy place where 
its distinctive principles are supposed to be enshrined. 



72 The Mercersburg Theology. 



vVhat are those distinctive principles, or wherein do 
they differ from the characteristic features of some 
other systems of theology? 

Proceeding gradually toward the point or principle 
in question, we lay down the propositions, that though 
all theology, as science, grounds itself in the divine 
philosophy of things, true philosophy depends upon 
a sound theology ; that correct theology rests in a true 
Christology, and that there can be no true and correct 
Christology without a correct conception of the person 
of Jesus Christ. Christ is the absolute person and 
first principle in the process of all sound philosophical 
inquiry as well as in all sound conclusion reached 
through the ratiocination of the human reason. "A 
true system of philosophy must take the absolute 
ground of the objective universe as its principle.* 
The origin of the universal whole is the true point of 
departure in a subjective system. As that absolute 
ground is God, reason must possess a true idea of God 
as essential to the validity of the final results of in- 
ductive or deductive ratiocination. A true idea of 
God is not derived from nature nor evolved out of 
man's being, but is brought to light alone in Jesus 
Christ who is the organic union of God and man, and, 
therefore, the most perfect revelation both of the hu- 
man reason or of humanity, and of God the absolute 
ground of all things. It follows that a valid meta- 
physical inqu'ry depends upon a belief in and a knowl- 
edge of Christ; that is, if the human reason start with 
the idea of God which is revealed by and in Christ, 
it becomes possible, so far at least, to unfold a true 



*Dr. E. V. Gerhart, in Mercersburg Review, 1857, pp. 285-6. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 73 



philosophy. If this idea is ignored or rejected, the 
first essential condition is wanting, and the very possi- 
bility of a true philosophy is out of the question. No 
logical, consistent metaphysician can take any posi- 
tion short of this, who believes that Jesus Christ pos- 
sesses sufficient claims to be regarded as the author of 
the only true Religion, as the Son of God, the Word 
made flesh. For as such he is not only the principle 
of theology and the only redeemer of men, but he is 
the concrete resolution also of all possible problems 
in philosophy." 

The distinctive feature of Mercersburg Philosophy, 
as pertaining to Christ's relation to the system, is 
not merely that he is the great "teacher sent from 
God," outranking all the sages in the world's great 
history. That he is, and more. In his person "are 
hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." 
Still more. His theanthropic person is the key to 
the solution of the great problem of being. Had 
Schelling and Hegel given Immanuel his proper po- 
sition in their philosophical speculations, they could 
have moved in less shadow and more sunshine as they 
struggled with the perplexing questions that enlisted 
their attention. Their reason failed to grasp a correct 
idea of God, as well as a correct conception of itself. 
Hence they came dangerously near identifying God 
with reason and confounding the object and subject 
of philosophical inquiry, laying themselves open to 
the charge of pantheism. Hence, also, it remained 
for some of their more evangelical disciples to apply 
the Christological principle to the Hegelian philosophy, 
eliminating what was heretical, correcting what was 



74 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



defective, and retaining what was good and true. 
This work was commenced by Rauch, continued by 
Schaff, and carried toward its completion by Dr. Nevin 
and his coadjutors and successors in the work of giving 
the church and the world the Mercersburg Philosophy. 

"The German Philosophy, with all its bewildering 
abstractions, was for Dr. Rauch the subject of full 
familiar knowledge; while it commanded also his gen- 
eral confidence and respect. He saw in its different 
cardinal systems not contradictions and confusion, 
so much as the unity of one and the same grand in- 
tellectual movement, borne forward still from one age 
of development to another. Of course, in this view, 
he placed a special value on the philosophy of Hegel — 
the culmination of a process — although he was very 
far from surrendering himself blindly to his authority. 
It was his belief that Hegel's philosophy, in spite of 
all the bad use which had been made of it, had wrought 
a real reform in the whole world of mind; especially 
in rightly defining the objects and proper bounds of 
the different sciences, and in settling the general meth- 
od by which they should be cultivated. In these cir- 
cumstances he found himself impelled to attempt the 
work of transferring to some extent into the literature 
of this country — not Hegel's philosophy as such, nor 
the metaphysics of Germany as a distinct and separate 
interest — but the life and power of German thinking 
generally, under its more recent forms, and in all that 
relates to the phenomenology of the soul. For this 
task he was eminently qualified. * * * He was 
at home in the philosophy of Great Britain, as well as 
that of Germany, and knew accurately the points of 



The Mercersburg Theology. 75 

contact and divergency by which the relations of the 
two systems of thought to one another, generally con- 
sidered, are characterized." (Dr. John W. Nevin in 
his Eulogy of Dr. Frederick Augustus Rauch. Mer- 
cersburg Review, 1859, pp. 458-7.) 

Philosophy, assuming the correctness of its self- 
definition as the " science of being," must also of ne- 
cessity assume that in the production and defence of 
any system thereof the human reason is not only an 
object of reason, but also an essentially important 
subjective factor as it moves out into the regions of 
objective existence, seeking to discover their coordi- 
nate and subordinate relations, systematizing them 
in one organic whole. While the Mercersburg Phil- 
osophy, in common with some other schools of thought, 
concedes to reason her rightful province and throne 
of judgment, it insists that reason must be her own 
normal self, be clothed in her right mind and in the ex- 
ercise of her own proper functions. This insistence is 
justified by the obvious fact that, according to the 
concurrent teachings of revelation and history, reason, 
if not actually dethroned, has at least been seriously 
disturbed, and consequently disqualified for the per- 
formance of the work which the great Father origin- 
ally gave her to do in a truly rational way. When 
this fact is left out of proper reckoning, philosophy, 
as science falsely so called, can do little more than 
make a mess of her speculative attempts to solve the 
problem of being. It is only as philosophy recognizes 
the fact that a foreign element has entered into the 
organism of humanity, disturbing its normal condition, 
involving reason with the whole manhood of man in 



76 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



the direful effects of sin and the terrible catastrophe 
of the fall, and turns to Immanual who came to take 
away the sin of the world in order to the consequent 
disenthrallment of human reason, that the science of 
being can bring order out of chaos.* Mercersburg 
is far from anything like a disparagement of reason. 
It rather insists upon her cooperation with faith and 
her emancipation and illumination in order that she 
may rightly perform her functions, f Such eman- 
cipation and illumination is from Him whose mission 
to our planet is to give light to every man that cometh 
into the world. Mercersburg Philosophy, with empha- 
sis upon the incarnation of the eternal truth, steps 
into the arena where speculative sabers are clashing 
in the dark, and, as the voice of one crying in the 
wilderness of acephalous abstractions, proclaims to 
reason as with a power from on high: Arise, shine 
for thy light is come, and the glory of God is risen 
upon thee. 



*" Moral disorder pervades the entire man. Sin has pene- 
trated to the core of self-hood. There it has a permanent lodge- 
ment. From the central point, from the heart of man, sin is 
active in all the radii of life, degrading instincts and aptitudes, 
misdirecting every faculty, impairing all functions, and per- 
verting feeling, thought and volitions. " — Institutes of the Chris- 
tian Religion, Vol. II, p. 102. 

t" Considered psychologically, belief or its equivalent is the 
first form in which the human soul reveals itself in all sponta- 
neous or conscious phenomena. Knowledge, discursive no less 
than philosophical, begins by crediting the thing, whether 
external or internal, which mind presumes to reproduce in the 
sphere of thought. " — Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. II, 
p. 655. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



77 



Out of Mercersburg Philosophy, the perfection of 
organic and methodical beauty, truth shineth. The 
abstractarian may ask: "Can any good thing come 
out of Nazereth?" Yes, but it is only in Nazareth 
that the Nazarene is seen in all the loveliness of his 
youth and in the prophecy of his manhood. To the 
outsider Christian ideals and the processes of their 
development may be looked upon as roots out of dry 
ground, and with neither form nor comeliness. Dis- 
tance does not always lend enchantment to the view, 
neither is the indolent mind willing to labor for the 
excellency of the knowledge that rewards the dili- 
gence of patient and persevering inquiry into the na- 
ture of things as they stand related to one stupendous 
whole. Such morbid stupidity is more alarming than 
wonderful. In the popular schools of fallacy and fic- 
tion there is no considerable relish and admiration 
for that truly philosophical and methodical systemi- 
zation of facts, forces and laws of the universe, which 
can be grasped only through a process of laborious 
intellectual effort. Hence when truth is hard to find, 
error becomes a convenient substitute. Thus emi- 
nence is made easy upon a very small capital. In 
philosophy as in religion, those tenets which are sus- 
ceptible of a superficial explanation should be looked 
upon with suspicion. The shallows murmur with 
plausible jargon, while the silent deeps are filled with 
fundamental principles of truth for those who take to 
their ethical and intellectual diving-bells and plunge 
into the unfathomable ocean of being for the hidden 
wealth which is never found floating upon the sur- 
face of the great deep. 



78 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



Hence it is that philosophy often leads to the most 
unphilosophic medley of ingredients. The confusion 
of dry abstractions is taken for the rattle of God's 
artillery, and the din of sounding brass is foolishly sup- 
posed to be the music of high-sounding cymbals. The 
conflict is frequently a battle with imaginary spooks 
by moonlight. The issues are not clearly defined, and 
the line of the engagement is not distinctly drawn. 
There are no sufficiently clear distinctions between 
the abstract and the concrete. Foes are often mis- 
taken for friends, and falsehoods for facts; and it will 
ever be thus until the general religious and philosoph- 
ical engagement takes place in the grand arena of 
truth and righteousness, and under the central sun 
of the universe. The Christ of God is that central 
sun. He shines through "the volume of the Book/ 1 
the written word, and also through the volume of 
Nature, the demonstrated word. He is the Alpha and 
Omega of both, as well as the entire fulness of their 
inner significance and glory. They are the comple- 
mentary two-foldness of God's revelation of himself 
to mankind. Rightly understood, there is no con- 
tradiction. Incongruity is the result of arbitrary sep- 
aration, and the effect of moonlight misapprehension. 
Christ must be recognized as the door into the rational 
understanding of the universe, and the key to the full 
and final solution of its mysteries. 

This basic principle of the Mercersburg Philosophy 
did not originate in the brains of its early apostles. 
Its fundamental elements had being before they passed 
into the laboratory of their grand and grappling in- 
tellects, placing them in the ranks of the world's great 



The Mercersburg Theology. 79 



thinkers. Just as the Reformation produced the Re- 
formers; just as the principles of popular freedom pro- 
duced Washington and Jefferson as distinguished actors 
upon the stage of Colonial history, so did the primary 
principle of the system of thought now under consider- 
ation lay hold of its most natural selections, and use 
them as its agents through which to manifest itself 
in the world, and challenge the consideration of de- 
vout men. The fact is that the fulness of time was 
here. The new philosophy having passed the full 
period of its gestation, was ready to be born, and all 
the old traditional midwives in Puritanic Egypt could 
not strangle it in its birth. And now, since it has been 
born, although it may be kept cradled for a while 
among the bulrushes of popular prejudice, it will grow 
as a proper child, and finally go forth, leading its 
disciples from the bondage of modern scholasticism 
into a higher realm of philosophic truth and conse- 
quent freedom in the land of promise. 

Its future is neither a matter of prophecy nor con- 
jecture. It is rather something to be rationally an- 
ticipated according to the dynamic life force of history. 
When once acquainted with the root we need no gift 
of prophecy to predict the coming and quality of the 
fruit. Its flavor and form are predetermined by what 
is involved in the norm. All are evolved through the 
bud. Only to a limited extent are qualities and prop- 
erties subject to modification by environment. Life 
needs no outv^ard mold in which to cast its suitable 
forms. It constantly struggles toward the realiza- 
tion of its own ideal. Such ideal is not a mere sub- 
jective concept in mental fancy, but a veritable pattern 



80 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



of the thing to come, in a more real form. That which 
is to be. has been and now is in type. Conformity 
to type is the fundamental law in the world's proper 
evolution. Let men catch a glimpse of the type and 
power of the world to come — already come — and with 
unsandled feet and uncovered heads will they do proper 
homage to the invisible forces and immutable laws 
which, like Moses of old, build their tabernacles after 
the patterns brought down from the Mount of God. 

Without the Christ all philosophy is jargon; the 
life of man is a hopelessly shattered pillar; history 
would be an unfinished pyramid, and the loftiest ideals 
of humanity fail of their realization. With a proper 
apprehension of his person and a correct recognition 
of his relation to the world that was made by him, 
Mercersburg Philosophy will continue to unfold it- 
self and scatter its beneficence abroad until it receives 
an ovation worthy of the principle it involves and 
commensurate with the blessings it is able to impart 
to the family of man. Encouraged with its past 
achievements and future hopes, it will not cease to 
direct its noblest efforts toward heaven, until, with 
a reverential hush of silence, it throws the beautiful 
gates ajar, and enables its devout students to look 
into the laboratory of Almighty God, where the handi- 
work of his visible creation is made out of the things 
which do not yet fully appear. In the process of con- 
forming with its type and in its application of its prin- 
ciple to the realm of mind, it will enter the capitol of 
intellectual empire, climb up into the highest dome 
of finite thought, examine more thoroughly the won- 
derful structure of the human soul, and demonstrate 



The Mercersburg Theology. 81 



its constitutional power to survive the dissolution of 
its earthly tabernacle and clothe itself with its house 
which is from heaven. Neither shall the limitations 
of sublunary things contract the powers of our chris- 
tian philosophy. Persevering in its legitimate search- 
ings to find out all that can thus be known of God, it 
will conduct its disciples up into the observatory of 
the skies and direct their most devout efforts to as- 
certain all that is knowable of the methods of Him 
who by his omnipotent word projected the stars into 
visible being and sent them as scintillations of his 
personal glory around the central throne of his bound- 
less empire. 



6 



LECTURE V. 



Mercersburg Philosophy — Continued. 

A close analysis and careful recapitulation of Lec- 
ture IV would show that while the Mercersburg Phil- 
osophy is a distinctive apprehension of eternal truth 
and a recognition of evolution of primordial principles, 
it also bears the seal of impressive personalities; that 
the age immediately preceding its advent upon the 
stage of human thought necessitated some such system 
of firm foundation and fair proportions; that Rauch 
and 8 chaff, as the representative champions of the 
best fruits of German thought, were welcomed by 
Dr. John Williamson Nevin to our American shores, 
and by him assisted in sowing its seed in the fallow- 
ground of the American continent; that Dr. Rauch had 
scarcely passed to his heavenly home before the flood- 
gates of rationalism were opened and the pietistic male- 
dictions of Puritanism were poured out against the 
new philosophy; that ignorance, prejudice, and dis- 
appointed literary ambition, then as now, were largely 
involved in the general principle and practice of such 
persecution; that the distinctive principle of the new 
system is the claim, the fact that Jesus Christ is as 
really the solution of all possible problems in philos- 
ophy as he is the author and finisher of the only true 

82 



The Mercersburg Theology. 83 



religion; that Schiller and Hegel measurably failed in 
their transcendental flights because of their partial 
failure to recognize Immanuel as the Alpha and Omega 
of that which, in their speculations, they sought to 
establish; that such recognition of Christ's person, as 
essential to correct thinking, is compatible with the 
claim that human reason, when clothed in her right 
mind and in cooperation with faith, has a throne of 
judgment in the realm of truly philosophical investi- 
gation; that on account of the entrance of sin into the 
world, disturbing the whole manhood of man and 
measurably dethroning reason, that faculty of the hu- 
man soul cannot fully resume its prerogative and ex- 
ercise its power in judgment, until awakened out of 
its abnormal state of repose and partial blindness, by 
the recognized presence and power of him who alone 
can communicate to it the light of a new life. 

Continuing now our march through this metaphys- 
ical wilderness, let us clear away the underbrush of 
seeming absurdity in the claim that human reason, 
with its normal functions measurably suspended, can 
yet, in some sense, rationally respond to the challenge 
of its heavenly author in opening its eyes to the real- 
ities by which it is confronted. 

This seemingly paradoxical proposition, now under 
consideration, is paralleled by several distinct and 
somewhat similar cases on record in the earthly history 
of Him who showed himself to be the Great Physician 
as well as the resurrection and the life. In each case 
the word of command communicated the power of 
obedience to the subject so parodoxically addressed. 
The paralytic with the withered hand was commanded 



84 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



to stretch that paralyzed member forth. The com- 
mand was no more a call to action than a conveyance 
of power to act. So with the address to the dead 
young man at the gate of the city of Nam, and the out- 
spoken challenge that issued from the personal foun- 
tains of life through the portals of death at Bethany. 
Those challenges were nothing less than the conductors 
of resurrection energy. And is Immanuel in his glori- 
fied state, and in possession of "all power in heaven 
and earth/' any less able to speak the resurrection 
word to the measurably dethroned human reason, and 
call it into a really rational exercise of its constitutional 
prerogatives and powers? Dr. Emanuel Vogel Ger- 
hart, one of the most analytical students of Mercers- 
burg Philosophy says:* "The natural religious 
life, growing forth from the original vital connection 
between the living soul and its author, makes men 
capable of a new and nobler communion. Spiritual 
capacity becomes a spiritual necessity, a demand to 
which Christianity is the adequate answer. Chris- 
tian revelation in turn pre-supposes the spiritual ca- 
pacities and spiritual instincts of mankind." 

The fact that reason has not been entirely dethroned 
and destroyed in the catastrophe of the fall, to such 
an extent as to leave man in a bestial condition, ac- 
counts for his retention of his intuitive perceptions 
of Deity and a supersensuous world. "Belief," says 
Dr. Gerhart, "is an intuitive act. The soul, by virtue 
of its divine capacities, looks through the natural upon 
the spiritual world, seeing Him who is its Author." 
This knowledge by intuition is a postulate both em- 

* Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. I, p. 228. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



85 



phasized and qualified by the Mercersburg School of 
Philosophy. It is emphasized as over against the 
English empiricists, and qualified as over against the 
German rationalists. Under the light of true chris- 
tian philosophy, rationalism — in the sense of undue 
deference to, or entire reliance upon unregenerated 
reason, as over against the more sure word of prophecy 
given in a special revelation — is the most irrational 
thing in the world. 

Although the Mercersburg Philosophy is a system 
distinct from all others, its fundamental principle is 
both the root and the offsp hig of everlasting truth. 
Its primordial essence was before the metaphysical 
acumen of Germany began its speculative inquiry after 
its substance; and yet, as an incarnation of such es- 
sence or substance, it is the reproduction of the best 
that was involved in the later German Philosophy as 
seen through a glass darkly by Kant, Hegel, Schelling 
and Schleiermacher. None of these, however, has been 
followed with a blind devotion; and hence it cannot 
be an attempted imitation of any previously defined 
system. On account of the prevailing rationalism 
and other erratic tendencies of the Hegelian age, the 
teachings of that great stellar galaxy have been re- 
ceived with charitable caution, and sifted with that 
scholarly independence which resulted in the elimina- 
tion of much error, as well as in the extraction of much 
precious truth. While Hegel was the bitterweed-tonic 
from which much of the mellifluous nectar or philo- 
sophic truth was extracted, Schleiermacher did much 
more in the way of advancing some of the fundamental 
principles which lie at the foundation of this modern 



86 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



school of thought. This he did rather in the character 
of a theologian. As such he stamped his own age with 
an impress that will continue to imprint or reprint 
itself upon all the ages to come. The piety of his 
heart, the energy of his will, and the grasping power 
of his intellect, as well as his marked individuality, 
contributed toward making him a master in the do- 
main of bold and aggressive religious thought. What- 
ever of heresy his earlier writings may have contained 
in the way of pantheistic leanings and empirical ten- 
dencies, his teachings, when carefully sifted, still con- 
tained pure seed-truth enough to plant a continent, 
and a sufficiency of fructifying force to produce an 
abundant harvest in the whitening fields of christian 
science. 

Perhaps the most able of metaphysical thinkers in 
that noted cluster of great men was George Wilhelm 
Frederick Hegel. His philosophy is very hard to ana- 
lyze, or rather to synthesize, because it is so difficult 
for the ordinary mind to see the relation between 
the parts. There are, however, presumptuous critics, 
who with a few magisterial waves of the hand can 
sweep away the whole production as a conglomeration 
of poison and chaff, while scholarly men stand with 
becoming modesty before the tremendous thought- 
power that startled Germany from its dogmatic dreams 
a hundred years ago, and which has staggered the 
world ever since. Mercersburg Philosophy takes Hegel 
for just what he is worth, nothing more. The Hegel- 
ian system is not accepted as a whole. To the sane 
and safe metaphysician Hegelianism seems, when tak- 
en in its entirety, like an attempt to solve the complex 



The Mercersburg Theology. 87 



problem of being without clear distinctions between 
the creator and the creature, the infinite and the finite, 
the objective and the subjective. Indeed, it sefms 
to come dangerously near the construction of a monism 
in which an E pluribus unum of all being is struggling 
to awaken into a rational consciousness of itself. Even 
those who have divested themselves of all consciou, 
prejudice against this questionable conglomerations 
look upon it as susceptible of a pantheistic construc- 
tion. Its God is neither distinct from nor transcen- 
dent above the world, while his immanence is scarcely 
distinguishable from his consubstantialness with crea- 
tion. And yet, upon the other hand, the system con- 
tains so much that encourages a rational view of the 
world as an organic whole, that it commands the re- 
spect of all earnest inquirers after philosophic truth. 
Considerate philosophers tolerate the existence of the 
shell for the sake of the truth it is supposed to contain. 
The true mother does not throw away the child be- 
cause the cradle is not in the best sanitary condition. 
She rather proceeds to clothe it in such new habiliments 
as are favorable to its proper development. Although 
there were not enough of righteous souls in Sodom to 
save the city as a whole, enough righteousness came 
forth therefrom to furnish a vital link in the ancestral 
chain of the coming Messiah. 

Dr. John S. Stahr, President of Franklin and Mar- 
shall College, in his Philosophy as a Factor in the Edu- 
cational System, says:* "The system of Hegel is 
an attempt to solve the question of thought and being 
on the basis of a thorough-going monism. It is no 

*Reformed Church Review, 1898, p. 100. 



88 The Mercersburg Theology. 



doubt one of the profoundest systems to which the 
human mind has ever given birth in the field of spec- 
ulative philosophy; and it is no wonder, therefore, 
that it should have been variously interpreted. On 
the one hand it has been pronounced atheistic or panth- 
eistic; on the other hand, it has been claimed that it 
is open to a theistic interpretation. * * * It is, 
however, difficult to see what room there is in the sys- 
tem for a transcendent, personal God. God is the 
absolute, or rather the absolute is God, and this is 
the rational process immanent in the world movement 
struggling to its full realization in the human conscious- 
ness. Here the pantheistic idea seems to be in the 
foreground, and there is no real act of creation by 
which the universe is constituted. * * * But if 
there is room for doubt with respect to the system of 
Hegel, there is no such room for doubt with respect 
to Dr. Rauch and the system of thought taught at 
Mercersburg and at Lancaster. 

Mercersburg Philosophy, in its partial development to 
date, has shown ability to define itself negatively, rather 
than as a positive evolution of its primordial prin- 
ciple in full form. It rejects the empiricism of Thomas 
Hobbes and John Locke without the ability to mark 
out clearly the highway of human ratiocination to the 
golden gate of human ceititude. It discounts the con- 
flicting claims of realism, as advocated by Abelard, 
and nominalism, as advanced by Roscelin, without 
offering any medial substitute entirely satisfactory to 
the unlettered mind. It repudiates much in Kant 
and more in Hegel without reproducing the meritor- 
ious remnants of their respective systems in a complete 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



89 



and satisfactory formula. It rejects the materialism 
of Hasckel and Lord Kelvin without showing the anti- 
podes of their teachings in the realm of the physical 
sciences. It quotes with seeming approval from the 
metaphysical writings of Lotze and Bowne, without 
as yet showing the exact place that their accepted 
echoing of German thought should have in a better 
and more correct and comprehensive system of sound 
philosophy. And yet there has been much progress 
made toward bringing solar light out of a philosophy 
of much moonshine, and heavenly order out of great 
cosmical chaos. 

It may in truth be said that the Mercersburg Phil- 
osophy starts with an intuitive idea or preception of 
the absolute, takes favorably to the form of a moder- 
ate realism in the sense that it recognizes the true, the 
good and the beautiful as being grounded in an ob- 
jective essence back of all phenomena, and moves for- 
ward toward its full development under the most 
reasonable assumption that the whole universe, in- 
cluding the " invisible things of God from the creation 
of the world," as well as "the things which do appear," 
is bound together, according to one great plan of the 
ages, by an inward principle of unity, not as a compos- 
ite mechanism, but as an organic whole. The whole- 
ness of God's creation is emphasized rather than the 
allness thereof. Sand-heap philosophy is looked upon 
as pitiable nonsense. God's great thought, taking 
form in the world's being, is not an omnipotent ab- 
straction, but a veritable divine effluence or infinite 
thread upon which all parts are strung. 



90 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



"In reason's ear they all rejoice 
And utter forth a glorious voice." 

Whilst there are many parts to the instrument, many- 
tones in the melody, and many variations in the grand 
orchestral chant, accompanied with a deep-toned dia- 
pason, the musical utterance is one organic truth : All 
for each and each for all, and all for Him who is over 
all, God blessed for evermore. 

The finite scope and end of the world culminates 
in man. Not, however, in the way of an evolution 
according to some of the early atheistic theories of a 
materialistic genesis, but by way of a gradual and re- 
sponsive actualization of a divine purpose or plan 
which comes down from God out of heaven in order 
that it may reach up to God again from the lowest 
form of the inanimate through the ascending series 
of one organic whole. Each lower stage foreshadows 
the coming of the next higher — preparatory without 
being parental— in a manner not out of accord with 
the Mosaic account as to the general order of creation. 
While nothing transcends its own proper bounds, each 
type prophesies of better things to come, and finds its 
meaning above itself. The mineral is for the vege- 
table ; the vegetable for the animal ; the animal for the 
rational. Here the procession enters the temple of 
knowledge and becomes conscious of itself; something 
very different indeed from that conclusion according 
to which Hegel's God becomes conscious of himself. 
Man is thus not only lord of creation, but also nature's 
great high priest, through whose knowledge thereof 
the very " heavens declare the glory of God." 

The certitude of human knowledge grounds itself 



The Mercersburg Theology. 91 



in a constitutional intuitiveness, interwoven with the 
substantial fibers of the human mind in the degree that 
the mind approximates its normal condition in the 
light of Him who is the light of the world. This po- 
sition is taken and maintained as over against the 
sensationalism of Locke and English philosophy in 
general, as also against the so-called common-sense 
philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, as the successor 
of Reid. Mercersburg Philosophy has as little pa- 
tience with the skull-drudgery of Wolf as it has with 
the skepticism of Hume. Man may know that he 
knows because he may know it. Otherwise his inner 
consciousness, even when enlightened by the absolute 
Sun of Truth, would deceive him and prove itself an 
abiding lie. The outer world is a necessary condition 
for the unfolding of the mental powers, but it is not 
the primary source of human ideas. Distinction is, 
however, made between the understanding, or dis- 
cursive faculty, and reason as t.i" power of apprehen- 
sion. At this point it is largely in agreement with 
Kant and Hegel. The subjec.ive ideausm of Fi elite 
and the skeptico-perceptualism of Bishop Berkeley are 
alike rejected. Man is a microcosm: he knows that 
there is a world without because he has a world with- 
in him. Self-consciousness and world-consciousness 
are glorified together in the innate God-consciousness. 
The idea of God is potentially or incipiently revealed 
in all men through the light of the eternal Logos or 
Word. At this point Plato was a living demonstra- 
tion of the truth which he saw through a glass darkly. 
Man knows that there is a God. The fool knows other- 
wise. Ps. xvi: 1. Agnosticism is nothing more than 



92 The Mercersburg Theology. 

a false image set up to frighten fools and scare the 
children. Modern atheism is the culmination of a 
chronic falsehood. Mercersburg Philosophy can the 
more consistently emphasize its condemnation of this 
heresy because it long since parted company at this 
point with the school of unphilosophic infidelity, and 
fell in rather with the philosophy of the absolute, as 
set forth in the best schools of German thought 

Dr. Thomas Gilmore Apple says:* " Humanity 
in its development in the sphere of time and space, 
in the order of the natural, phenomenal world, is 
joined with an invisible spiritual world that is eternal. 
The spiritual world underlies and supports the na- 
tural world at all points. Though man himself is 
finite, the infinite flows into and through him. Though 
he lives in time the eternal sounds through him. Hu- 
manity as a whole is intoned from the spiritual realm, 
and every individual human life strikes its roots with- 
in the same. In various ways a sense of this relation- 
ship on the part of man to a spiritual realm that stands 
in the sphere of the absolute reveals itself in his con- 
sciousness and in his unfolding life. Every line of 
thought which his intelligence pursues leads off into 
the infinite and absolute. In the moral sphere, where 
we have to do with will and law, still more palpably 
do we find the lines reaching off into a realm that lies 
beyond the finite. A moral law that is absolutely 
binding, which the conscience acknowledges as such, 
must itself stand in the sphere of the absolute, and 
postulate a lawgiver who is infinite and eternal. And 
th'jn in ways that reach deeper than conscious intelli- 

* Reformed Quarterly Review, 1886, pp. 426-7. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



93 



gence and will the spirit of man feels and realizes this 
eternal back-ground of his existence." 

Man can know God. Distinction must be made, 
however, between knowing and measuring, between 
apprehension and comprehension. The absolute is 
an idea of the reason. The understanding, or dis- 
cursive faculty, can neither live nor move outside the 
categories of time and space. Here we reach the con- 
necting link between philosophy and religion. At this 
point Mercersburg Philosophy passes over into the 
sphere of theology and applies its fundamental prin- 
iples to the solution of more ethical problems. Hence 
Mercersburg anthropology must have its place in the 
moving picture of sacred sciences in order that man 
may be viewed as the fulfillment of all the unconscious 
prophecies below him, the solution of all the problems 
around and within him, and be the heir presumptive 
to all the attainable glory above him. Heir presump- 
tive? Yes; but a contingency has arisen. Sin has 
disturbed the normal order of God's moral creation, 
making it groan and travail until now. Philosophy 
can deal with the problem of human destiny only as 
it turns on the supernatural light of revelation. This 
is another point emphasized by the Mercersburg School. 
It applies the principles of its philosophy to Soteri- 
ology. Jesus Christ is the great physician, as well as 
the great philosopher of the world. He brings grace 
as well as truth. John i: 14. He meets all wants and 
masters all problems. In him the heir presumptive 
becomes the heir possessive to "the Kingdom prepared 
from the foundation of the world." 

Indeed, it doth not yet fully appear what Mercers- 



94 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



burg Philosophy shall be. Only as Christ is made more 
manifest in the history of the world will it appear with 
him in progressive glory. In the meantime, like the 
wise and devout Daniel of old, it will continue to wor- 
ship with its face toward Jerusalem. Its future is 
before it. Its past is little more than a record of its 
persecutions and the beginning of its progress. Al- 
ready forty years ago, Dr. Henry Harbaugh, in taking 
editorial charge of the Reformed Quarterly, 1867, p. 
5, said of the sj^stem in which the Mercersburg prin- 
ciple is enshrined : "In its early, heroic period, it stood 
alone against the combined hosts of what claimed the 
right to stand, unquestioned and unassailed, as the ne 
plus ultra of American, Protestant, evangelical ortho- 
doxy. The storm was fierce and loud; and though 
our little ark swung fearfully, it at the same time swung 
proudly, upon the waves, and was never suffered to 
be borne away from its safe anchorage. The same 
utterances which at that time caused alarm and oppo- 
sition do not now awaken the same prompt and fiery 
jealousy. Yet the earnest question so vigorously dis- 
cussed in former years, is neither fully settled nor out 
of the way. New allied issues are pressing upon the 
church from all sides." 

One year later, 1868, after the death of Dr. Har- 
baugh, Dr. Thomas Gilmore Apple, in assuming the 
duties of editor of the Review, said: "We have a pat- 
rimony in early Christianity. We must use the free- 
dom guaranteed by the Reformation itself, to strive 
after a higher and better position than we now occupy. 
The Reformers can never become our popes. The 
three centuries which have unfolded the contents of 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



95 



the Reformation must form the womb for the birth 
of a new epoch. To the dawn of a new era all who make 
earnest with the present struggle in the church, look 
with faith and hope." 

In Dr. Elnathan Elisha Higbee the Mercersburg 
principle was carried forward and out into multi- 
form logical manifestations. It enriched his mind al- 
ready highly endowed with natural abilities; it gave 
tone to his incisive literary contributions for the press ; 
it characterized his work in the class-room and his 
lectures from the public platform; it gave an addi- 
tional charm to his classical poetry; it palpitated the 
heart of all his pulpit messages as an ambassador of 
Jesus Christ; it scattered fragrant flowers and luscious 
fruits all along the pathway of his life until, in the posi- 
tion of State Superintendent of Public Instruction, 
he reduced it to the consistency of ethical and intellec- 
tual food for the children of the great Pennsylvania 
Commonwealth. 

Dr. Emanuel Vogel Gerhart gave some of the earlier 
ratiocinations of the Mercersburg Philosophy a more 
organic and logical form, and threw more of the in- 
tuitive element into its processes of induction, until 
he was able to round out his own grand life by an 
application of its principles to a new cast of theology 
as the queen of all sciences. 

In Dr. William Rupp, the most progressive of all 
its disciples, the Mercersburg principle was advanced 
in such a way as to retain its essential substance, and 
yet become susceptible of new interpretations to meet 
the requirements necessary to solve new theological, 
ethical and social questions along the lines of its log- 



96 The Mebcebsbtjrg Theology. 



ical development. His most seemingly radical prog- 
ress was in the direction of his emphasis upon chris- 
tian reason as containing a revelation of divine truth* 
until he laid greater stress upon the collective chris- 
tian consciousness as a source of authority in faith 
and doctrine for the individual christian mind. 

Prof. John C. Bowman says: "But whatever prog- 
ress we make in the knowledge of truth, while bound 
to the earthly sphere, we should ever look forward to 
greater disclosures, Divine knowledge is incomplete 
not only because the present state of believers is not 
final and perfect, but also for the reason that the reve- 
lation of God in Christ is not now ultimate and com- 
plete." Reformed Church Quarterly Review, 1891, 
p. 313. 

Prof. George W. Richards has advanced, or rather 
has been advanced by the progressive movement of 
Mercersburg system of thought, until he has been made 
able to incorporate more of the religious with the 
scientific elements in order to the clear apprehension 
and comforting certitude of that knowledge which en- 
ables men to endure as seeing the invisible. Kant's 
pure reason is for him no less pure, but more convin- 
cive and conclusive when incarnated in the practical 
reason, in the form of obedience to the divine will and 
activity in christian work. See his editorial in the 
Review for January. 1907. 

Dr. John S. Stahr, after making a partial analysis, 
and giving out a brief statement of the principles of 
the Mercersburg Philosophy, draws an inference as 
to the advantages which accrue from its teachings in 

*Reformed Church Review, 1897. 



The Mekcersbttrg Theology. 



97 



the institutions of the church.* "It has opened up 
a new field of vision to all earnest inquirers after the 
road to knowledge, and given both zeal and direction 
to their efforts. It has introduced unity and order 
into the intellectual, moral and religious development 
of the church and emphasized a development of 
thought and life which has provecl highly beneficial 
to those engaged in secular pursuits." 

Whilst ^lercersburg Philosophy points in the di- 
rection of the heavenly world as enshrined in the New 
Jerusalem, it also takes cognizance of all the contents 
of time and space. "It is not only in pure meta- 
physics, 7 ' says Dr. Thomas G. Apple, "that the ques- 
tion of the absolute is raised, it overshadows every 
science/'* It aims to embrace all that lies within the 
infinite circle of existence. It assumes that the in- 
visible forces of nature are real, and catalogues them 
among the entities of veritable being. It cannot, 
without stultifying itself, reckon them as any less real 
than the material rocks beneath or the stellar worlds 
above. While it claims that something is known, it 
is modest enough to acknowledge that there is a great 
unknown. It is, however, as far from agnosticism as 
it is from omniscience. It includes the physical as 
well as the metaphysical within its proper realm of 
research. It is fully as much within its province to 
analyze an immaterial sun-beam as to measure a ma- 
terial molecule. Its field of inquiry embraces the 
force-elements of nature, such as sound, light, heat 
and gravity, as really as it does the idea of the absolute. 
Indeed, it lays more stress upon the weight of an im- 

*Tx,e Reformed Church Review, 1898, pp. 103, 109. 
7 



98 The Mercersburg Theology. 



material principle than it does upon the avoirdupois 
of a ten-penny nail. Some day when our philosophy 
fully understands itself and recognizes the broader 
realm of its legitimate inquiry and application, its X- 
rays will penetrate the opaqueness of much unphilo- 
sophical philosophy and philosophic sophistry. That 
time will come. Its great hereafter is close at hand. 
The old Horatio will then learn that there is more in 
heaven and earth than he has dreamed of in his ma- 
terialistic speculations. Then will our text-books 
make a clearer distinction between the forces and the 
laws of the physical universe, between gravitational 
force and the law of gravitation, between sound as a 
substance and the sensation of sound produced through 
the organ of hearing, between steam as an inert form 
of matter and heat as a propulsive power that moves 
the cargoes of commerce to the marts of the world. 

These claims should not be confounded with any 
one of the many meritorious yet defective systems 
or theories whose fragments now strew the highway 
of history. All praise to the great men who have lived 
before us. 

We would strew their tombs with flowers 

The rarest ever seen; 
And rain these tears of ours in showers 

To keep them fresh and green. 

Plato and Aristotle, Socrates and Seneca, scored their 
way through the primitive wilderness of human think- 
ing until they stepped into an open field of investi- 
gation. The christian philosophers of the scholastic 
age reasoned themselves into the region of religious 
mysticism, then passed into the glory of celestial 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



99 



truth. Francis Bacon played upon the string of his 
Novum Organum as he passed from observation and 
generalization to induction, until, as in his own theory 
of obtaining knowledge, he made his transition from 
the known to the unknown. Descarte's vigorous in- 
tellect placed him in advance of his age, and yet he 
barely penetrated the cuticle of the problem he under- 
took to solve before he was called to pass the pearly 
portals. Leibnitz dreamed of pre-existent force, 
thought of eternal harmony in the universe, projected 
his theory of invisible substances, and formulated his 
doctrine of the monads, then spread his wings and flew 
away into the realm of heavenly Wissenschaft. Others 
have advanced different theories all the way from the 
most ethereal idealism to the material crust of crea- 
tion as emphasized by Haeckel and Sir William Thomp- 
son; yet none of their theories are worthy to be com- 
pared with the glory that has already been revealed 
through the Mercersburg Philosophy, and which is 
yet destined to shine like a resplendent star in the 
nebulous fog of receding sophistries. 

Well, is it not time for a signal star to appear above 
the birthplace of something better than anything yet 
offered in the talmudic history of the past? The un- 
satisfied yearnings of earnest men demand something 
better. They can neither be satisfied with a picture 
nor satiated with a song. The intrinsic glory of the 
truth calls for something more true. In fact, the 
broadening field of diversified sciences requires nothing 
short of a holy catholic philosophy, just as really as 
the divergent races of men need a holy catholic re- 
ligion to bring them convergingly back to their orig- 



100 The Mercersburg Theology. 



inal moorings, and conduct them thence to the port 
of their proper destiny. Mercersburg Philosophy is 
catholic in its constitution. Its catholicity consists 
in its universal adaptability to every department of 
human knowledge, and every legitimate inquiry of 
the human mind after the nature of things, from the 
point where they originated in the personal Author 
of their being to the ultimate goal of their wisely and 
beneficently ordained destiny. Sustaining this re- 
lation to the absolute, the general and the ultimate, 
no narrow latitude can contract its powers. It is for 
science and for religion; for reason and for faith; for 
time and for eternity; for the solution of the problem 
of human life, here and hereafter. In reverential im- 
itation of the incarnate truth, its mission is to bless 
all the nations of the earth. 

It is not merely among, but superior to others. As 
such, its mission is to correct the faults, supply the 
wants and supplement the incompleteness of many. 
They are in need of it. Its music will unstop and 
charm the ears of the deaf, and the scintillations of 
its living light will fall as healing rays upon the eye- 
balls of the blind. Like Joseph, after being persecuted 
and slandered, it will still retain its virtue, rise by its 
own distinctive force of character into the highest 
places of earthly power, bind the princes of sophistry 
at pleasure, teach the senators wisdom, and furnish 
the corn of truth for its envious, famishing and beg- 
garly brothers. 

Moreover, Mercersburg Philosophy has a higher mis- 
sion than merely to bring other theories and systems 
of thought out of the wilderness in which they have 



The Mercersburg Theology. 101 



meandered in their fruitless attempts to reach the land 
of promise. Its face is turned toward the crystal sea 
around about the great white throne. Among all the 
vestal virgins that wait upon the Creator in the grand 
temple of creation, it stands nearest to the most sacred 
fires that burn upon the altar of the christian religion. 
Its last scope and purpose, as well as its greater glory, 
is to serve in the "more perfect tabernacle not made 
with hands." Ministering thus in the sanctuary of 
the Most High, it sustains a more immediate and in- 
timate relation to the "world without end," and con- 
tributes more directly and beneficially to the deepest 
wants and yearnings of the human mind and spirit 
than any other balm in Gilead. No wonder, there- 
fore, that it can approach and address man at the 
central point of his being where the vital and connect- 
ing link of his personality binds him in peculiar and 
blessed relation to the God of heaven and to the im- 
perishable bliss of an endless hereafter. 

The foregoing are some of the reasons why this dis- 
tinctive system of thought is gathering strength as 
it marches onward with a sweep of power that no pre- 
judice can resist. Let the movement continue to go 
forward and upward with the impetus of its own con- 
stitutional impulsion, accelerated by the momentum 
of its own progress, and stimulated by the beneficence 
of its own achievements, until empty idealism on the 
one hand, and crustaceous materialism on the other, 
shall be glad to burn the gods of their idolatry, and 
hasten to worship with admiration and respect be- 
fore the superlative majesty of the absolute and ever- 
lasting truth. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 

Before thy full disclosure, heavenly truth, 

We'll stand in manhood as we kneel in youth. 

Here let us kneel till these frail forms decay, 

And night's best dreams be realized in perfect day; 

Then shall our souls, now thralled in lunar haze, 

Soar without bounds and shine in glory's radiant blaze. 



LECTURE VI. 



Mercersburg Anthropology. 

Our last lecture closed as we with expectation stood 
on tiptoe near the mountain top. While looking out 
and up into the future, we were actually charmed with 
the possibilities of our holy catholic philosophy. Pass- 
ing over into the proper province of theology, our sys- 
tem of thought turned its face toward the Xew Jeru- 
salem with an obvious adaptability to all the sciences 
in the infinite circle of being. We noticed its special 
applicability to everything in the broad field of bio- 
logical and ontological investigation. We observed 
that as the highest order of finite life emanates directly 
from the person of the Christ, its most logical flow is 
found in Immanuel's kingdom, and in the vital energy 
that animates the christian church. Here it takes 
root in the soil of humanity, and. as a scientific in- 
quiry, springs up in the form of an investigation of 
human nature in its relation to itself and to the powers 
that be above it. 

Whilst theology relies for its best material upon the 
contents of the record of God's special revelation of 
himself, as given in his written Word, and whilst it 
involves the necessity of a philosophical inquiry into 
the nature of things, it nevertheless grounds itself in 

103 



104 The Mercersburg Theology. 

Anthropology, the science of man, so considered in 
his entire nature as to include Psychology, the science 
of the human soul with its faculties and functions. 
If Jesus Christ is "the root and offspring of David," 
both Theology and Christology must, under a corres- 
ponding view, be considered as the root and offspring 
of Anthropology. Whilst it is true that man cannot 
know himself without a knowledge of God, it is equally 
true that he cannot know God without an approxi- 
mately correct understanding of himself. " Psychol- 
ogy and Theology," says Dr. Rauch, "are connected 
by their common subject, which is man." "Hence 
the study of Psychology is indispensable to a thorough 
study of Theology."* 

In agreement with the truth of the proposition laid 
down at the opening of the former paragraph, Psychol- 
ogy was the first fruit in the order of time in the de- 
velopment of the Mercersburg System of metaphys- 
ical thought. Already in 1840 Dr. Frederick Augustus 
Rauch published in book form his "Psychology or 
View of the Human Soul, including Anthropology." 
While, like the Mercersburg Philosophy in general, it 
was a reproduction of the latest and best German 
thought on mental science, it had a marked individu- 
ality. Drawn to some extent from Stewart, Brown, 
Reed, Heinroth, Hegel, Wirth and Steffens, but espec- 
ially from Cams, Rosenkranz and his old teacher Daub, 
it had, nevertheless, a spirit and genius of its own. 

Dr. Rauch's printed and published work on Psy- 
chology received almost immediate attention in the 



* Rauch's preface to his Psychology, pp. 2, 3. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



105 



way of reviews, press notices, and criticisms from Amer- 
ican editors and educators. With the exception of 
Dr. James Murdock's outbreathing of inexcusable ig- 
norance and prejudice in 1842, the criticisms, though 
not always favorable and commendatory, were never- 
theless respectable in their intelligent fairness. Dr. 
Nevin, in his Eulogy of Dr. Rauch in 1859, said: "His 
work is based especially on the Philosophical Anthro- 
pology of Daub, with a proper use at the same time of 
other recent systems. His Psychology, when it ap- 
peared, was something new among us. We had noth- 
ing like it before; and we have had as yet nothing to 
supersede it properly since.* Dr. Bomberger, in 
his very favorable review of Dr. Gerhart's book on 
Philosophy and Logic, 1859, said of Dr. Rauch's work 
on Psychology, that it "has justly been allowed to 
constitute an epoch in metaphysics, and this, too, more 
emphatically than can be claimed for any English or 
American work before or since." "From the aim and 
character of the work announced at the head of this 
notice, we rejoice to see that Marshall College has not 
sacrificed its high estimate of metaphysical studies 
by its transplantation to Lancaster, and its union 
with Franklin and Marshall College, "f 

Dr. Gerhart, referring to Dr. Rauch as a master in 
mental science, said of him in 1856 (Mercersburg Re- 
view, 1856, p. 238): "He was capable of profound 
logical reasoning; not only capable, but was habit- 
ually systematic in all his disquisitions. He had a 
keen perception of logical inconsistency or impropriety. 

* Mercersburg Review, 1859, p. 464. 

t Mercersburg Review, 1859, pp. 95, 96. 



106 The Mercersburg Theology. 

His mind embraced also a wide range of information 
on subjects belonging to various departments of sci- 
ence. He was well versed in the history of philosophy 
and he knew precisely where he stood. He under- 
stood his relation to the false systems that had agi- 
tated the philosophical world." 

It was because "his mind embraced also a wide 
range of information on subjects belonging to the var- 
ious departments of science/' that Dr. Rauch's Psy- 
chology was so fittingly introductory to the further 
and full development of the Mercersburg System, 
in Theology, Christology, Ecclesiology, Soteriology, 
Christian Cultus and Eschatology. As much cannot 
be truthfully said of many of the old works on mental 
science which grounded themselves in more or less 
mechanical views of man, and which, notwithstanding 
their many merits, were a general jumble of the in- 
coherent elements of the so-called philosophy of the 
human mind. 

Mercersburg Psychology lays stress upon the facts 
that the human soul is an entity; that such entitative 
form of being is not mere motion, or product of matter 
as advocated by such materialists, as Lord Kelvin 
and Hseckel, but, as advanced by Dr. Rauch, of a 
distinct order of a divinely created vital energy; that 
such energy holds its existence as an organic consti- 
tution — a personality, "the center of man, the center 
of nature and the echo of the universe, capable of a 
development which reaches its highest possible form 
of completeness in its consciousness of God, of its re- 
lation to him, and in suffering God to speak to it, and 



The Mercersburg Theology. 107 

through it to his whole creation which culminates in 
such personality."* 

Speaking of the development of the human soul in 
the form of faculties, as already foreshadowed in the 
unfolding of plant-life, Dr. Rauch says: "This view, 
the only correct one, unites the two former. For ac- 
cording to it we perceive on the one hand a union, an 
identity, and on the other a variety, but the variety 
and difference proceed from the union, which appears 
in every single organ, and only unfolds itself by all of 
them. This leads us once more to the idea of de- 
velopment, hatever develops itself changes, yet it 
does not become anything else than it was when un- 
developed. For while it takes different forms, it 
remains the same in all of them. While it exhibits 
itself under different aspects, it does not pass over into 
anything that is not itself, nor does it receive any of 
its various forms from without, but all develop them- 
selves from within. It becomes and exists otherwise 
when developed, than when undeveloped, but it has 
not become anything else. Developing itself it be- 
comes, in reality, what before it was according to pos- 
sibility and energy. So the bulb of a hyacinth may 
be said to be, and not to be, the hyacinth. It is the 
hyacinth according to energy, and nothing can grow 
forth from it, that is not in it, and again it is not yet 
the hyacinth, for it has not yet grown forth. The grow- 
ing forth is the development of the energy slumbering 
in the bulb. The idea of development contains, there- 
fore, the idea of a transition from the invisible to the 



* Rauch's Psychology, p. 178. 



108 The Mercersburg Theology. 



visible, from the dark and unknown to the manifest 
and revealed. Thus the soul contains in its simple 
identical activity (essence) all that afterwards appears 
in succession under the form of faculties. They are 
but the development of the energy of the soul, but its 
representation and its organs. Hence the soul is an 
energy, which in developing itself, remains the same 
that it was, and yet becomes different. It remains 
the same, for nothing is added from without, all comes 
from within ; it is different, for it exists in its developed 
state. The first development of the plant is, as we 
have seen, the roots and rude leaves, which become 
more refined as they grow higher on the stalk; in the 
first development of the soul, the leaves near the roots 
of its existence are the senses; these are followed by 
attention and conception. Higher than these are 
fancy, imagination and memory, which may be con- 
sidered the blossoms on the tree of knowledge, while 
pure thinking under the form of the understanding, 
judgment, reason and will, are the ripe fruits."* 

In the foregoing quotation the true idea of an or- 
ganic entity and development, as illustrated in the un- 
folding of the plant and applied to the human soul, 
is characteristic, not only of Mercersburg Psychology 
but also of Mercersburg teachings on all the sciences 
throughout the entire curriculum of that distinctive 
school of thought. It is everywhere organic, rather 
than mechanical. It has no room for atomistic ex- 
istences in the biological multiplication table. It knows 
nothing of an aggregation of men constituting a human 



* Rauch's Psychology, pp. 182, 183. 



The Mebcbrsburg Theology. 109 



race. It does not tolerate for a single moment the 
sand-heap notion of a composite soul. While it teaches 
the distinct individuality and importance of each fac- 
ulty and function, it emphasizes the fact of their de- 
velopment from, and organic unity in, the one and 
ever identical God-created and God-given spirit and 
personality — "a living soul." (Gen. ii: 7.) 

Such development is, however, considered as in- 
complete without religion. "Man as the subject of 
Psychology is created for religion, and cannot do 
without it. Religion is not a mere quality, but the 
substance of man.* At this point christian psy- 
chology passes over into a higher realm where religion 
is to be reckoned with as an energy which de- 
velops itself according to "the law of the spirit of life 
in Christ Jesus." Although it rides in the chariot of 
authority, formulates itself into doctrinal theories, 
blooms into the beauty of genuine morality, and brings 
forth fruit unto holiness, it does not pass into the soul 
as an outward proclamation of abstract precept, but 
legislates itself, through the freedom of the will, into 
the sanctuary of the human heart, enthrones itself 
in the center of human personality, and thus becomes 
the very "substance of things hoped for" as well as 
"the evidence of things not seen." The God-con- 
sciousness in man becomes the Christ-consciousness 
in the christian-regenerated feeling, reason and voli- 
tion — faith. Adopting the fundamental principle of 
Schleiermacher that Christianity is primarily life, Mer- 
cersburg psychology leads logically forward to the 



* Rauch's Psychology, p. 2. 



110 The Mercersburg Theology. 

conclusion that Christianity in and of and for the hu- 
man soul is neither mere quality nor quantity, but 
vital "substance," of which, moral qualities and ethi- 
cal quantities are properly predicable. 

Mercersburg psychology not only recognizes re- 
ligion as an essential " substance" in order to the com- 
pleteness of the human soul, but also takes into reck- 
oning that foreign and disturbing element of sin, which 
makes the christian religion necessary as a remedial 
power in order to the soul's full development of its 
possibilities. Dr. Rauch truly says:* "But here 
we must remark in the first place that the soul is al- 
ready diseased in its state of nature. Turned away 
from its proper objects, truth and holiness, and the 
love of God, it is sunk in sinfulness and vice, and in- 
stead of deriving its food and nourishment from the 
study of the good and noble, it seeks for it in the sen- 
sual and transitory. As little as the magnet could be 
said to be in its vigor if instead of pointing toward the 
north, it should suffer itself to be attracted in other 
directions, so little is the mind healthy, when it once 
has lost its only proper direction, but it must be said 
to be in error and in a dangerous deviation from the 
right path." 

In his treatise on mental derangements as diseases 
of the mind, Dr. Rauch does not dissent entirely from 
other psychologists in their division of these diseases 
into melancholy as a disease of the feelings, insanity 
as a disorder of the understanding, and mania as a de- 
rangement of the will. He rather claims that the 



* Rauch's Psychology, p. 142. 



The Mercersburg Theology. Ill 



activities of the soul are so related to each other that 
the diseased condition of one will affect all the others. 
This latter, we think, is the more logical position to 
take, inasmuch as it includes all that is valuable in 
the former. Mercersburg psychology is too consistent 
with itself to permit of a mechanical analysis of the 
human soul, as an organic entity, by an arbitrary di- 
vision of its faculties, or a false classification of its 
functions. It also emphasizes the fact that though 
the soul be diseased it is still the soul. The mind can- 
not be destroyed by mental disease. Personality can- 
not be lost in mere individuality. "All diseases of 
the mind," says Rauch, "have their longer or shorter 
intermissions. This shows that the reason still ex- 
ists, and is only deranged." Neither the undeveloped 
nor abnormal condition of a person can place such per- 
son in the category of the impersonal. As the infant, 
enriched with the endowment of an immortal ego, is 
a person who has not awakened to a consciousness of 
itself, so the personality of an adult, with a diseased 
mind, is under a cloud, in a brain-storm, or without a 
rudder on a tempestuous sea; yet it remains a person 
or personality nevertheless, and as such furnishes, to 
a greater or less extent, presumptive evidence that un- 
conscious personality, or one whose being or identity 
continues under the ravages of mental disease, will be 
able to outlive the threats and throes of physical dis- 
solution, and more fully and fairly develop such per- 
sonality in a better and brighter clime. 

The mutual relation of body and soul was another 
point upon which Dr. Rauch laid emphasis. This is 
very properly touched upon and brought out in his 



112 The Mercersburg Theology. 



natural and easy transition from his Anthropology 
to Psychology, from the physical to the psychical side 
of man's complex nature. The old views touching 
this relation are cited as "quite various." He men- 
tions two on page 169, viz: the one theory that the 
soul is the efflorescence and result of physical life, and 
the other that the body is built by the soul for its 
habitation as a caterpillar spins its web or weaves its 
texture for its future metamorphosis. These theories 
are combatted as untenable in the light of true mental 
science, and incompatible with Mercersburg philosophy 
throughout. He rejects the dualism implied and 
taught in such false reasoning, and, proceeding with a 
clear distinction between soul and body, he postulates 
their union in one common life with its center in per- 
sonality, and proceeds to lay down and prove the 
truth of three distinct propositions as consistent with 
a sound Christian Anthroplogy, viz: 1st. The life 
of man, as the union between the physical and the 
psychical, is essentially different from the life of an 
animal. 2nd. The distinction between soul and body 
in one under which they are viewed as proceeding from 
a single divine thought, and terminates in human per- 
sonality. 3rd. This human personality is the ac- 
tualization of the highest divine thought or idea pred- 
icate of the Personal God, a creation of God 
filled with the capability of living forever. Such sound 
metaphysical reasoning escapes the dualism of Des- 
cartes, arouses the sleeping monadism of Leibnitz, 
steers clear of the pantheism of Spinoza, rises high 
above the evolutionism of the elder Darwin, and tri- 
umphs over the annihilationism of those who teach 



The Mercehsburg Theology. 113 



that death ends all that there is of man and for man- 
kind. 

Another distinguishing feature of Mercersburg An- 
thropology is the stress laid upon the relation between 
the person and the outside world, or the created uni- 
verse. This is really the most important question 
in the whole realm and range of philosophy. When 
man comes fully to understand the exact relation of 
the microcosm to the macrocosm, the veil will be meas- 
urably drawn aside from much metaphysical mystery 
and perplexity, enabling the human mind to penetrate 
more deeply into the complicated problem of all fin- 
ite being. Dr. Rauch has supplied us with the key 
that is to unlock the great store-house of much knowl- 
edge now hidden from the wise and prudent. On 
pages 177 and 178 he lays down the proposition that 
the human "person is not only the center of man whose 
radii and periphery are all the activities of body and 
soul and by which all of them are pronounced, that is 
through which they sound (personant), but it is also 
the center of nature, the echo of the universe." Per- 
sonality is born. It becomes conscious of itself through 
development. Such unfolding of self into self-con- 
sciousness proceeds on a line parallel with the develop- 
ment of its consciousness of the world. These two 
processes of development are mutually related to each 
other, as we have just seen to be true of soul and body 
in personality; and personality and consciousness are 
complete only when man becomes fully conscious of 
God and of his relation to him, and when he suffers 
God to speak to and through himself. At this point, 
in this sense, and under these conditions, Kosmos cul- 
8 



114 The Mercersburg Theology. 



minates in man for the purpose of concentering in 
Him from whom, by whom and for whom are all things. 
This is a very different consciousness and culmination 
from that which seems to be the teaching of at least 
one phase of the Hegelian philosophy, which, accord- 
ing to some of its most able and friendly critics, rep- 
resents God as becoming conscious of himself in man. 
Thus Rauch teaches that God is man's creator, while 
Hegel has left his teaching open, at least on one point, 
to the construction that man is God's creator. 

We have already seen that man's psychical consti- 
tution fits him for religion, calls for religion, and finds 
its completion only in religion ; and, furthermore, that 
it is the emphasis laid upon these concomitant facts 
that gives Mercersburg Philosophy in general its dis- 
tinctive character. Beginning the conclusion of his 
treatise on page 354 (First Edition, 1840), Dr. Rauch 
says: "We have now considered man in his different 
relations to nature, to himself and to his fellow men, 
yet one we have omitted, that to his Creator. This 
relation, if it is to be pure, must rest on faith. * * * 
It (religion) is a peculiar activity of God, which an- 
nouncing itself to the heart of man, changes it, converts 
it, and restores man to peace with himself, with the 
world and with God. * * * Man without religion 
is incomplete: a plant that has not flowered; a bell 
without a tongue which cannot give a clear and dis- 
tinct sound; a planet, that, having wandered from its 
sun, is without light; a stranger without a home." 
Then, having shown the inadequacy of all natural and 
false religions, he proceeds to the supernatural and 
true. "Religion is always based upon a communica- 



The Merceksburg Theology. 115 



tion of God to man, and where this communication is 
wanting, where the regenerating power of the Spirit 
is absent, there cannot be a true religion. " Of course 
he means by a " communication of God to man" the 
essential contents of the Holy Scriptures, the more 
full revelation of Himself in his Son, Jesus Christ, and 
"the regenerating power of the Spirit." The necess- 
ity of such "communication" is not so fully expressed 
in h s excellent treatise on Psychology as it is in his 
printed sermons published in some of the early numbers 
of the Mercersburg Review, and in his volume of ser- 
mons on The Inner Life of the Christian. Although 
Dr. Rauch did not consider himself called upon to 
discuss the subjects of Christology, Soteriology and 
Christian Ethics in his work on Anthropology, it is, 
nevertheless, everywhere therein apparent between the 
lines and overshadowing the contents of the lines, that 
he viewed the wonderful nature of man as finding its 
completion in Christianity — the absolute religion, the 
purest ethics and the highest form of humanity. "The 
book recognizes a special revelation from God, an apos- 
tacy of man, the intervention of the Savior, the ne- 
cessity of regeneration and sanctification by the Holy 
Spirit; and excludes every one from the kingdom of 
heaven who does not yield his heart to Jesus Christ."* 
In order to understand more fully what Rauch's 
Psychology implies, as well as what it expressed, it 
must be borne in mind that the author of the immortal 
work intended it as introductory to what he had further 
contemplated in the way of a work on Christian Ethics. 



* Dr. E. V. Gerhart, Mercersburg Review, 1856, p. 254. 



116 The Mercersburg Theology. 

But, alas, for the uncertain termination of human 
plans! Just as he was about to pass through his psy- 
chological portico into his proposed super-structure 
of Moral Philosophy, he was called to make his trans- 
ition through the pearly portals into the more perfect 
school of knowledge where the philosopher's dreams 
are realized in rapturous vision. Moreover, this trans- 
ition was made just as his more intelligent friends had 
begun to awaken into a full realization that he was a 
prodigy in Classical Literature, Natural History, Es- 
thetic Art and Mental Science. 

But when Elijah's mantle fell from the shoulders 
of this promising German christian scholar at his lord- 
ing of Jordan, that same Providence which had pro- 
vided "the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof, " 
called and prepared an Elisha to take up and wear the 
robe of didactic responsibility. Dr. Nevin became Dr. 
Rauch's successor as the President of Marshall College. 
He " strengthened the foundations previously laid, 
and consolidated, beautified and carried forward the 
superstructure which had been reared thereon. Whilst 
Dr. Nevin occupied the presidential chair, the depart- 
ment of morals and ethics, we have been repeatedly 
informed, was most sedulously cultivated, and fre- 
quent regrets have been expressed, and continue to be 
expressed, that he has thus far steadily declined to 
publish his course of lectures upon this science."* 

It is also in evidence that Dr. Rauch looked upon 
Dr. Nevin as at least his co-worker, if not also as his 
successor in his proposed work of bringing out a book 



* Dr. Bomberger in Mercersburg Review, 1859, p. 95. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 117 

on Moral Philosophy. In the latter part of 1840 he 
wrote to Dr. Nevin from Saratoga where he had gone 
for the benefit of his health: "The most agreeable 
hope animates me, that the goodness of the Lord will 
again restore me to health, and give me strength to 
labor in conjunction with yourself, my dear friend, 
for a great and noble object. * * * My Chris- 
tian Ethics have occupied me very pleasantly on my 
whole journey. * * * I never lose sight of the re- 
lation in which I have come to stand to you as that in 
which alone my enterprises seem to prosper. Single 
and solitary no man can accomplish anything/'* 

If Dr. Nevin did not, in accordance with Dr. Ranch's 
purpose and wish as expressed in his letter from Sara- 
toga, "labor in conjunction" with him to the full re- 
alization of the "great and noble purpose" of follow- 
ing Dr. Rauch's Psychology with an equally meri- 
torious work on Christian Ethics, he, nevertheless, 
followed him in a course of lectures on Moral Philos- 
ophy. And, furthermore, if Dr. Bomberger's hope, 
that Dr. Nevin would "publish his course of lectures" 
and thus perpetuate Mercersburg's Moral Philosophy 
was not realized, the truth, concerning which Dr. Bom- 
berger was so painfully solicitous, has not yet perished 
from the earth. The spirit of that course of lectures 
became incarnate in Mercersburg and Franklin and 
Marshall graduates. It clothed itself in the flesh and 
blood of a Reformed Christian ministry, and spoke, 
through her teachers, to the church at large. Neither 



*Dr. Nevin' s Eulogy on Dr. Rauch, Mercersburg Review, 1859, 
pp. 459, 460. 



118 The Mercersburg Theology. 

was such teaching confined to the East. It crossed 
the rising mountains and rolling rivers, and moved 
toward the setting sun. Dr. Emmanuel Vogel Gerhart 
and Dr. Moses Kieffer caused its voice to echo through 
the halls of Heidelberg. From 1852 to 1865 it in- 
spired the hearts and molded the thinking of the earl- 
ier graduates of Heidelberg College and Heidelberg 
Theological Seminary, and is still, to some extent, at 
work, like leaven, in the meal of the Reformed Church 
in the West, as well as in the East. 

Dr. Nevin was indeed a worthy yoke-fellow and 
logical successor of the young German philosopher. 
Rauch had the advantage of having traversed the 
whole field of German thought. Through the trans- 
parent medium of his own mother tongue he made 
himself acquainted with its speculations to the extent 
of familiarity with the wide range of German philos- 
ophy, with all its excellencies on the one hand and all 
its bewildering abstractions upon the other. Counter- 
balancing these educational advantages of his young 
colleague, the American theologian, besides possessing 
equal natural abilities and scholastic attainments, was 
more fairly and fully at home in the modes of Ameri- 
can thought and expression. This fact, as well as his 
additional years of experience and mental discipline, 
gave him, under such view, an advantage, if not super- 
iority, over his young friend who was always more or 
less handicapped by his merely acquired knowledge 
and use of the English language. Furthermore, hav- 
ing had the advantage of taking up certain features 
of the general work where the young German genius 
had laid it down, he entered directly into the momen- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 119 

turn of the movement. This objective impetus was 
so much capital stock in the business of developing 
the principle of the mental and moral sciences germi- 
nated and partially cultivated in Marshall College. 
There is always an advantage in entering into the la- 
bors of another in such a way as to be able to share in 
his capital stock — unless such stock has been unduly 
watered. How far such stock has been watered in 
some of the educational institutions, and diluted liter- 
ature of the Reformed Church, is a question that may 
be discussed — elsewhere, and hereafter. 

Dr. Nevin, though catholic in spirit and pacific in 
policy, never compromised the essential principle of 
the Mercersburg Philosophy; neither did he hide its 
light under a bushel, because, forsooth, he persisted 
in his purpose not to publish his course of lectures in 
the form that some of his friends desired. He did, 
however, in his own way, give the public the substance 
of his theological and philosophical erudition in a form 
well adapted to the wants of the church and the ne- 
cessities of the world. His published volumes and 
numerous magazine articles are among the most com- 
prehensive repositories of knowledge ever unfolded by 
any one mind from a cardinal principle of truth, and 
bequeathed to the world. 

One single article* from Dr. Nevin's pen is a veri- 
table thesaurus of knowledge, sufficiently comprehen- 
sive to include a syllabus of all that would be necessary 
to outline a complete work on Mental and Moral Phil- 



* The Wonderful Nature of Man. — Mercersburg Review 1859, 
p. 317. 



120 The Mercersbtjug Theology. 



osophy. Hear him! "The inorganic is in order to 
the organic. The crystal is a prophecy of the coming 
plant. Rising continually from lower to higher and 
more perfect forms of existence, the whole vegetable 
world serves to foreshadow, in like manner, the sphere 
of animal life above. This again is an upward move- 
ment throughout. * * * The organic movement 
comes to its rest ultimately in man. He is the true 
ideal of the world's universal life, the last aim and 
scope, we may say, of the whole natural creation. He 
is the fulfilment of all its prophecies, the key to its 
mysteries, the exposition of its deepest and most hid- 
den sense. * * * He stands before us intrinsically 
greater, in his bodily organization itself, than all the 
geological creations which served so many ages be- 
forehand to prepare the way for his coming. * * * 
But what is all this in comparison with the centrali- 
zation that is here exhibited to us in the constitution 
of the human soul.. * * * Mind is infinitely greater 
than all that is not mind. It towers above the whole 
material creation. It outshines the stars. * * * 
Thought is more free than air, more penetrating than 
fire, more irresistible and instantaneous in motion 
than lightning. * * * What we hold in our in- 
telligence is only in small part ever contained in our 
actual consciousness at any given time. * * * The 
case swells upon us into its full significance, only when 
we come to ask: Can that which has once been in 
the mind, so as to be part and parcel of its conscious- 
ness, ever so pass out of it again as to sink into ever- 
lasting oblivion?" 

"But it is in his Moral Nature most of all that man 



The Mercersburg Theology. 121 



comes before us finally in the full terrible sublimity 
of his being. There is a close and necessary connec- 
tion, of course, between the moral and the intellectual. 
Reason and will, thought and action flow together, 
and as it were interpenetrate each other continually 
in the constitution of the mind. * * * Thought is 
in order to action ; knowledge in order to freedom. The 
practical reason is greater than the speculative reason. 
Truth in the understanding must become truth in the 
will also, if it is ever to be either spirit or life. * * * 
It (the will) is, by its very constitution, a self-deter- 
mining power. It is no blind necessary force, like the 
laws of nature, but a free spontaneous activity, which 
knows itself, and moves itself optionally its own way. 
* * # This freedom, however, forms only one side 
of its marvelous constitution. Under another view 
it is just as much bound by the force of necessary law 
as the constitution of matter itself. The only differ- 
ence in the two cases is, that in nature the law carries 
itself into effect, as it were, by its own force, while in 
the moral world it cannot go into effect at all, unless 
by the free choice and consent of the will itself Y\ T hich 
it thus necessitates and binds. The necessity to pre- 
vail at all must pass into the form of freedom. But 
this does not detract in the least from the idea of its 
authority and force. * * * The will does not make 
the law, but still it is through it alone, that the law 
comes to any positive legislation in the soul. In no 
other way can the full force of the categorical impera- 
tive, Thou shall, be brought fairly home to its con- 
sciousness. What a strange spectacle we have ex- 
hibited to us here. No wonders of the simply outward 



122 The Mercersburg Theology. 



creation, no mysteries of mere nature, can ever sig- 
nify as much for us as the world we carry about with 
us continually in our own being." 

In conclusion, young gentlemen, let me say that you 
would do well to make these immortal truths and 
thoughts your own. Apprehend, appropriate, and 
make them a part of your qualifications for the work 
before you. Psychology and Moral Philosophy are 
not Theology, much less are they the primary power 
of God unto salvation ; but they are essential to your 
complete outfit as teachers and pastors. Without 
them you cannot become master-workmen. You must 
be able to analyze the human soul before you can diag- 
nose the diseases that it is heir to in its abnormal state. 
Otherwise you will not be able to rightly divide the 
word and apply the gospel remedy in a specific way 
to the varied wants of each and all. 



LECTURE VII. 



Mercersburg Christology. 

The lecture on Anthropology led us to the very 
portal of the palace we are now about to enter. Com- 
ing up along this anthropological pathway we saw 
many indications of what was awaiting us at our jour- 
ney's end. Psychology led on, through Moral Phil- 
osophy, to Christianity as the absolute religion and 
the highest possible form of humanity. In the light 
of that religion we saw that man is not only the 
culmination of the Kosmos, but also the very apex 
of the moral universe, looking for its full and grand 
organic completeness in Him who is head over all 
things: "That in the dispensation of the fulness of 
times he might gather together in one all things in 
Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on 
earth; even in Him. ,, Eph. i: 10. 

The occasion for the great Christological movement 
that characterized the middle decades of the nine- 
teenth century was the peculiar and perplexing con- 
dition of the religious world, both in Europe and Amer- 
ica. Men were losing faith in many of the traditions 
of the fathers, with no adequate and satisfactory sub- 
stitute therefor. The church was congested with 
false socialism, humanitarian dreams, and a composite 



123 



124 The Mercersburg Theology. 



theolog}^. The center of God's kingdom was sought 
for and located in each one of the thousand possible 
points in its periphery. The old warfare between 
authority and freedom was being waged with more 
than former fierceness. Zion was agitated with hair- 
splitting distinctions and hairpulling discussion. 
Christianity was viewed as an aggregate unity of gen- 
eral dispersion and diversity, with very little stress 
upon its supernatural verities. The hosts of Israel 
were in an unconscious state of general stampede be- 
fore the uncircumcisecl Philistines, with no principle 
upon which to rally and reunite its disorganized and 
discordant forces. Disintegration was the tendency 
of the age, and no union was sought for except upon a 
" mutual negation of differences." A thousand in- 
valids exclaimed, "Is there no balm in Gilead, is 
there no physician there?" Ten thousand feverish 
wounds cried out: 

"Open to us the living fountain 
Whence the healing waters flow." 

In relief of such a felt want and in answer to 
such an earnest call from the distracted condition 
of Christendom there arose what is now known as the 
Christological movement. The movement did not 
aim to be destructive but constructive, or rather, re- 
constructive of the old theologies which had taken 
for their cardinal principle something that was not 
principal in the evolution of a system. Christology, 
like its great archetype and architect, came not to 
destroy but to fulfill. Such fulfillment began to be 
accomplished by the proper recognition of an old prin- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



125 



ciple from a new point of view, and in a new appre- 
hension of the old truth. The theanthropic person 
of the Christ was recognized and emphasized as that 
vital, central, and reconstructive principle. It is true 
that the old theologies recognized Christ as important 
in their respective systems and schemes of human re- 
demption. Sturdy Calvinism crowned him with a 
royal diadem, and yet crowded him out into the peri- 
phery of its supralapsarian plan of salvation to make 
room at the center for a metaphysical abstraction. 
Hence it failed to assign him that central position in 
which alone he could be logically regarded as having 
in all things the pre-eminence, "the center of all 
organic unities and the unity of all organic centers." 

How far the inspiration for such a movement was 
drawn from the philosophy of Germany is not an essen- 
tial inquiry at this point. That some such inspiration 
was needed from some source is no longer disputed 
by up-to-date christologians. And, furthermore, that 
some excellent seed-thoughts were found germinating 
in the best works of German theologians of the last 
century is cheerfully admitted ; and yet it is consist- 
ently claimed that the tap-root of truly christolog- 
ical theology was in the general principle of that philos- 
ophy which aroused Germany a hundred years ago, 
and which was subsequently transplanted to articulate 
and animate the dry bones of American Puritanism. 
This was started and is now being accomplished by 
means of a more christological exegesis, which led to a 
more proper accentuation of that scriptural key-note to 
the celestial symphony: "No one hath seen God at 
any time; the only begotten Son who is in the bosom 



126 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



of the Father, he has declared him." This great mys- 
tery of godliness is not only the germ-principle of all 
true and sound theology, but also, and rather, the 
essential tap-root to the tree of life which is in the 
midst of the paradise of God,, and whose "leaves are 
for the healing of the nations." 

Mercersburg Christology does not claim to have in- 
troduced any new principle into the economy of human 
redemption. It rather recognized the real and proper 
presence of Him whose goings forth have been of old r 
from everlasting. It sees Christ in the purpose of 
providence, the plan of the ages, the life of humanity, 
and in the history of the world. " Christological 
roots,'' says Dr. Harbaugh, "run back of the incar- 
nation into Judaism and even heathenism." How, 
in what sense, and for what purpose the Logos dwelt 
in and manifested himself unto the pagan nations and 
the sages of antiquity has not yet been theologically 
defined. He was in the burning bush of Israel, and 
in virtue of his abiding presence therein the bush was 
not consumed. "In the volume of the book it is 
written'' of his coming not primarily to our sin-polluted 
planet, but rather in the gradual unfolding of the 
divine purpose, the revelation of his Father's will which 
he delighted to do (Ps. lx: 7, S), and to assume our 
nature, to which he was "allied by an original and 
eternal aptitude." David foresaw the Lord always 
before his face, and realized that in his presence there 
is fulness of joy. In the fulness of time he came and 
took up his abode in the temple of humanit}\ After 
such incarnation, the Son of man continued to walk 
in the midst of the seven candlesticks, moving down 



The Mercersburg Theology. 127 

the central aisle of church his»o» y. Emphasis is laid 
upon the fact that in fulfillment of his promise He is 
personally present in all the affairs of his coming king- 
dom. False theology not only denies his proper im- 
manence in his church, but also robs him of his pro- 
per pre-eminence as the organic head and the vital- 
izing center of the great gospel economy. 

When Dr. Nicholas Copernicus turned his atten- 
tion from the study of the structure and ailments of 
the human body to institute an inquiry into the sys- 
tem of planetary relations and revolutions he aimed 
neither to destroy the old nor proclaim the existence 
of new worlds. It was rather his rational purpose to 
discover the order and demonstrate the law that gov- 
erned what had been from the beginning, is now and 
ever shall be, until the heavens are no more. He 
sought for no new system, but for a new recognition 
of an old heliocentric system. He founded a new as- 
tronomy and flashed its scientific light upon the world. 
So with Mercersburg Christology. It does not radi- 
cally antagonize or aim to destroy the essential parts 
of any doctrine or tenet of the faith once for all de- 
livered to the saints. For example, the divine sov- 
ereignty, the incommunicable prerogatives of the ab- 
solute One, the fatherhood of God, the eternal son- 
ship of Jesus Christ, the personality of the Holy Ghost, 
the brotherhood of man, universal depravity on ac- 
count of sin, the need of atonement, justification by 
faith — these with all other teachings of the Bible, 
whether formulated into confessions, or otherwise held, 
are neither ignored nor set aside as of less importance 
than as generally held in the creeds of Christendom. 



128 The Mercersburg Theology. 

It is claimed, however, that they should be viewed as 
occupying their respective positions in the periphery 
and around the center of a christo centric and organic 
system. As now placed and viewed in the atomistic 
and manufactured plans of redemption, none of these 
doctrines appear in their superlative truth and beauty. 
It is not proposed to shoot a new theological meteor 
into the skies already hazy with nebulous nonsense, 
but to permit the old sun of righteousness to arise with 
healing in his wings. It is only with such a sunrise 
that a better, brighter, and broader day can be ushered 
in. Christ, as the illuminative center, will drive the 
Ptolemaic system of unphilosophical theology away, 
and bring in a new heaven and a new earth wherein 
dwelleth scientific righteousness. 

The Christology contended for by the Mercersburg 
school of theological thought is not a mechanical com- 
pilation of cardinal christian verities, with the truth 
of Christ's divine-human person as the center of the 
group, giving him a place in some human plan of 
salvation in a sense somewhat similar to that in which 
the Kohinoor diamond might be regarded as having 
found its proper setting in a jeweled cluster of less 
precious and less brilliant gems. Such attempts to 
proclaim Immanuel Lord of all may be regarded as 
very little better than placing another crown of thorns 
upon his head. Herein consists the weakness and 
worthlessness of many so-called systems of theology. 
Indeed they are not systems at all, but rather collec- 
tions and schemes. Their weakness is not in any des- 
titution of truth, or truths, but rather in their lack of 
organic wholeness. Fragmentary collections of per- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 129 



feet parts do not necessarily constitute a perfect and 
comprehensive whole. 

Mercersburg Christology is christo centric rather 
than decreto-centric. Vv r hilst it emphasizes the will 
of God as the eternal norm of all law in heaven and 
earth, it neither grounds itself in predestination nor 
hedges in pretention. It has "a corn of wheat" for 
its central life-germ, which develops itself into a per- 
ennial plant in the garden of the Lord's house, rather 
than into a diamond in the laboratory o f mere meta- 
physical speculation. Wherever this decreto-centric 
theology prevails it leaves but little room for anything 
like a proper conception of Christianity in its christo- 
centric and organic sense. A sound christology recog- 
nizes the foreknowledge of God and the sovereignty 
of his will, but knows of no possibility of harmony be- 
tween divine authority and human freedom except 
in the great mystery of Godliness, the 'word made 
flesh, in which the divine will begins to be done on 
earth in the emancipation of the human will, and at- 
tains its consequent full freedom and self-determining 
power. Thus it is that the Mercersburg Christology 
points its index finger toward the Rock of Ages as 
higher, more central and more organic in the christian 
system than Plymouth Rock, with all its questionable 
immortality in sentiment and song. 

Mercersburg Christology, though not essentially 
different from the Roman Catholic view of Christ's 
theanthropic person, is nevertheless antithetic to the 
papalistic teachings respecting our Lord's relation to 
the individual christian, the church, and the whole 
economy of human redemption. It disallows the pre- 
9 



130 The Mercersburg Theology. 

tension of the Romish heirarchy of a Christo-proces- 
sional and Christo-successional authority vested in and 
transmitted through a pontifical human being, pre- 
latically robed and mitered upon the bank of the Tiber. 
Christ rules over the church by reigning in the com- 
munity of the believers. The sway of his scepter is 
from his throne as established in every loyal, loving 
heart. No man is exclusively deputized to open or 
shut the kingdom of heaven with a key of arbitrary 
authority dangling from the girdle of a prelatical func- 
tionary. Christ neither builds his church from a scaf- 
folding on the outside nor rears the superstructure 
from some ex cathedra seat within his living, growing 
temple. Mercersburg Christology is rather in full 
agreement with St. Paul: that the spiritual house is 
"compacted by that which every joint supplieth, accord- 
ing to the effectual working in the measure of every 
part, making increase of the body unto the edifying 
of itself in love." A papio-centric despotism is not 
worthy to be compared with a christo centric democ- 
racy. 

Mercersburg theology is furthermore in very broad 
contrast with that apprehension of revealed truth which 
grounds itself in the Bible as a mere book of record. 
It postulates its faith according to the teachings of the 
Bible, but does not build upon the book as the found- 
ation of its faith. Jesus Christ, according to the in- 
spired record, is the precious corner-stone, chosen of 
God, and all sound theologians must build thereon. 
Other foundation can no man lay. If any man build 
not upon this Rock of Ages, his work cannot endure. 
"This is the record, that God has given unto us eternal 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



131 



life, and this life is in his Son. " "He that hath the 
Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God 
hath not life/' the whole school of Chillingworth to 
the contrary notwithstanding. Distinction without 
separation is, however, made between the Bible and 
the Word of God, forever settled in the heavens, Ps. 
cxix: 89, which liveth and abideth forever, and which 
by the Gospel is preached when Jesus Christ is pro- 
claimed as "the glory of the past, the life of the present 
and the hope of the future." Such preaching and 
such theology is christocentric rather than biblio- 
centric. 

Still further: Mercersburg Christology emphasizes 
as the essential principle of Christianity, the absolute 
religion. His divine-human person, in whom dwelleth 
all the fulness of his theanthropic life, is the primordial 
principle and perennial fountain of the whole economy 
of human salvation, rather than "all that Jesus be- 
gan to do and to teach" and suffer, in any sense sep- 
arately considered. The Mercersburg school of the- 
ology glories in the cross, only as the solemn tragedy 
signified thereby is held in organic union with the mys- 
tery of Bethlehem, and the unique character that binds 
them together in one complete remedial system. From 
no other point or promontory can christian science 
consistently shout: 

Glory and honor, power and praise 

Superlative to God be given! 

Mortals awake with swelling lays, 

And praise the incarnate King of Heaven, 
Whose advent through his virgin birth 
Brings love to man and peace on earth. 



132 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



Let man abashed with speechless awe 
Bend low before the Child divine! 
Before this light all shades withdraw, 
This gem possessed, all heaven is mine. 

Then bless, my soul, the eyes that see 

Thy God in thy humanity. 

In agreement with Christ's multiplied and multi- 
formed utterances of himself, the Mercersburg school 
teaches that his person is more fontally fundamental 
than his acts in those elements essential to the com- 
pleteness of his atonement. This view is consistently 
held without any denial that Christ made, as well as 
is the atonement. ''For if when we were enemies we 
were reconciled to God by the death of his Son ; much 
more, being reconciled we shall be saved by his life." 
His works could not bear testimony of him. except as 
he gives power and validity thereto. "He is our peace." 
Eph. ii: 14. He came not merely to point out the way, 
teach the truth, and open up the fountain of life, but 
he is the way, the truth and the life. John xiv: 6. He 
came not merely to open the door, but he is the door. 
John x: 7. He further proclaims himself the light 
of the world, the bread of life, and the resurrection. 
"Ye are complete in Him."' Col. ii: 10. Dr. Henry 
Harbaugh has truly said: "The view which makes 
both the fall of man and the atonement a mere arrange- 
ment outside of organic laws is inadequate and un- 
tenable, and places every doctrine, both of Anthro- 
pology and Theology, in a distorted and false light."* 

Mercersburg Christology, as a scientific apprehen- 
sion of the gospel, grounds itself not only in the cardinal 



* Christological Theology, p. 36. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 133 

utterances of Christ concerning himself and his rela- 
tion to the whole superstructure of human redemption, 
but also in the christological teachings of the New 
Testament throughout, and especially in the outbreath- 
ings of the beloved disciple. Saint John never grew 
weary of declaring unto the Church, "that which was 
from the beginning/' "which he had heard," "seen, 
and handled of the Word of life," "which was in the 
beginning with God," "which was God," which "was 
made flesh," and which "dwelt among us full of grace 
and truth." Such were some of the elements in the 
inspired christology of the disciple whom Jesus loved, 
and who so lovingly and trustingly reclined his head 
upon the Redeemer's bosom as to feel the beatings 
of that great heart which by its theanthropic action 
causes the kingdom of heaven to throb with ever- 
lasting pulsations. 

So also with Saint Paul, the inspired philosopher in 
the church's formative period of her history. What 
a truly scientific grasp he had upon the central theme 
and subject under consideration, in the Epistles ad- 
dressed more primarily to the christians under Grecian 
culture. Listen to the deep-toned diapason that comes 
swelling up through the christological anthem that 
finds its sublime echo and record in the Epistle to the 
Ephesians. How grandly he rises in the scale, and 
sweeps all the octaves in the instrument engaged in 
sounding out his inspired melody. How impatient 
he seemed "to make all men see what is the fellowship 
of the mystery which from the beginning of the world 
hath been hid in God who created all things by Jesus 
Christ, to the intent that now unto the principalities 



134 The Mercersburg Theology. 



and powers in heavenly places might be known by the 
church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the 
eternal purpose which he proposed in Christ Jesus our 
Lord/' No wonder that his apostolic zeal led him 
on to the sublime climax of his inspired reasoning to 
exclaim: " Christ is all, and in all!" 

The task of producing the first and last fairly de- 
veloped system of Christological Theology was under- 
taken and accomplished in 1891 by Rev. Emmanuel 
Vogel Gerhart, D. D., LL. D., Professor of Systematic 
Theology in the Theological Seminary of the Reformed 
Church in the United States, located at Lancaster, Pa. 
This recast of old theologies was made and given to 
the christian public in two octavo volumes, under the 
title of Institutes of the Christian Religion. They con- 
stitute a work not so entirely denovo as they do a 
gathering up in one, and a reproduction of the es- 
sential and valuable parts of all the old " bodies" into 
one living soul of divinity, in such a way as to form 
one complete organic unity. Preparatory to such a 
recast was the work which had already been performed 
by Rauch, S chaff, Nevin and others, as a development 
of the germ contained in the seed-thoughts of some of 
the " leading German theologians since the time of 
Schleiermacher. " For this task Dr. Gerhart was evi- 
dently ordained and appointed of Providence. His 
fitness for the work, which the Father had given him 
to do, was grounded in an abiding faith in Jesus Chrisb 
as the Son of the living God, supplemented by his na- 
tural abilities, broad scholastic attainments, and the 
logical cast of his earnest christian mind. 

As already intimated, the Institutes of the Christian 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



135 



Religion, and the positive work preparatory thereto, 
are valued and noted for their constructive and re- 
constructive character. Furthermore, the enduring 
excellence of the work will attract the admiration of 
future generations, because of its fair and full recog- 
nition of all fragmentary orthodoxy previously held 
under various other forms. While thus recognized 
and honored, they were rescued from false attitudes, 
and placed in more organic relation to what the author 
consistently held and logically developed as the norm 
and governing principle of all theological truth. Not 
one jot or tittle of Trinitarian orthodoxy, as in the 
Patristic age, of Scholastic orthodoxy, as in the days 
of Anselm and Aquinas, of Evangelical orthodoxy, as 
held at the time of the Reformation, or of Puritan 
orthodoxy, as founded on Plymouth Rock, was allowed 
to pass away, except as all passed to their new align- 
ment and restatement in a more christological theol- 
ogy as seen in the light and life and love of the personal 
truth in Jesus Christ. This new theological victory 
over old abstract and mechanical systems was won, 
not by any radically new ratiocinations of the human 
mind, but by a renewal of St. Peter's view of Christ 
as the Son of the living God. 

In testimony of the aforenamed christological sys- 
tem of christian truth the apostles, and some of the 
disciples of Marshall, Mercersburg, and Lancaster, here- 
inafter named, have set their hands and seals as follows: 

Dr. Frederick Augustus Ranch, the first President 
of Marshall College, though primarily a philosopher 
in the realm of Mental and Moral Science, rather than 
in Christology, as specifically considered, left behind 



136 The Mercersbuhg Theology. 



him sermonic productions most manifestly intoned with 
a truly christological apprehension of the everlasting 
gospel of the Son of God. Hear him in his sermon 
"Every man the Lord's in Death."* "The christian 
is the Lord's internally, by his own will and desire. 
Christ is the center of all his activity; and whatever 
he does, has a bearing on Christ's cause. The Father's 
will is the christian's will; all opposition has been re- 
moved, and the whole life of the believer is a spiritual 
one, is a dying in the Lord. Nevertheless he lives, 
yet not he, but Christ lives in him, and the life which 
he now lives in the flesh, he lives by the faith of the 
Son of God, who loved him and gave himself for him. 
When his last hour approaches, he sinks into the hands 
not of a strange God, but of his Master, matured for 
eternity, full of desire to enter his home, and full of 
hope to participate in the praises and hallelujahs which 
angels sing to the Lord of creation." 

Dr. Philip SchafT was a historian rather than a chris- 
tologian; yet his voluminous writings abound with 
tributes to that apprehension of Christ's person so 
characteristic of the Mercersburg school of theology. 
Speaking of Church History, he saysrf "Its proper 
starting-point is the incarnation of the Eternal Word, 
who dwelt among us and revealed his glory, the glory 
as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth; and next to the miracle of the first pentecost, 
when the church took her place as a christian institu- 
tion, filled with the spirit of the glorified Redeemer and 
entrusted with the conversion of all nations, Jesus 

*Mercersburg Review, 1859, pp. 618, 619. 
♦History of the Christian Church, p. 2. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 137 



Christ, the God-man and Savior of the world, is the 
author of the new creation, the soul and head of the 
church which is his body and his bride. In his person 
and work lie all the fullness of the God-head and of 
renewed humanity, the whole plan of redemption, and 
the key of all history from the creation of man in the 
image of God to the resurrection of the body unto ever- 
lasting life." 

Dr. John Williamson Nevin, to whom, more than 
to any other man, belongs the honor of taking Mercers- 
burg Theology through the first stages of its develop- 
ment, left on record many testimonials of the part he 
performed in the unfolding of the christo centric prin- 
ciple. Over a half century ago he wrote:* " Christ 
himself everywhere claims to be, not the oracle simply 
of truth and life in force before, but the principle of 
truth and life made real for the world wholly and only 
by himself. The Spirit fell upon him at his baptism 
in full measure to find way through him and from him 
subsequently to the whole family of the Redeemed 
(Math, ii : 16 ; John vii : 39 ; Acts i : 4, 5 ; ii : 4) . He is the 
organ of living communication between earth and heav- 
en, the central point where they are first fairly united 
into one (John i: 51). He is the real presence in the 
world of what had been proclaimed before in the way 
of shadow only, and word (Johni: 18; Math, v: 17, 18; 
Heb. ix: 8, 12, etc.), He is no moon merely to reflect 
like the prophets before him, a simply borrowed light, 
but according to his own word, the very sun of the 
spiritual world (John viii:12) and so, of course, a foun- 
tain and principle of light for it in his own person. He 

* Mercersburg Review, 1850, p. 9. 



138 The Mercersburg Theology. 



is the well of salvation (John iv:14; vii:37, 38), the 
manna of immortality (John vi: 49, 51), the victory 
itself in which is swallowed up all the power of the grave 
(John v: 21-25; xi: 25-26)." 

Dr. Moses KiefTer:* "The common view that the 
Son of God became incarnate merely to save men from 
sin and suffering, rests on the assumption that he is 
merely Redeemer, and not also the organic head of 
humanity, in and through which it reaches its final 
consummation in glory and immortality. On this 
assumption sin, that most inglorious and shameful 
thing, creation's blot and nature's blush, has been a 
great advantage to our race, in that it moved the Son 
of God to empty himself of the divine glory and to take 
upon him the form of a servant. According to this 
view, darkness is necessary to light, falseness is neces- 
sary to truth, the inglorious must precede the glorious, 
dishonor must precede honor. If this view be correct, 
then let sin abound, that grace may much more abound. 
But it may be asked : Did not the sin and fall of man 
at least afford to the Son of God an opportunity to 
show forth his glory as Redeemer, and to place crowns 
of victory upon the heads of the redeemed? We reply 
that the Son of God is not the second Adam because 
he is Redeemer; but he is Redeemer because he is the 
second Adam; i. e., because he is the normal, generic 
head of humanity." 

Dr. John H. A. Bomberger, in the palmier days of 
his christological searchings after the source and center 
and substance of all truth, wrote :| "But there is only 

* Mercersburg Review, 1871, pp. 447, 448. 
f Mercersburg Review, 1859, pp. 155, 156. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 139 



one correct system of theology, namely: that which 
is based on the incarnation of the Son of God. Thus, 
then, as Christ incarnate is the starting point and cen- 
tral fact of the true history of the world, we must most 
emphatically make it the basis and supporting center 
of the philosophy of man. In him will be seen both 
the ground and the perfect ideal of humanity. And 
the true relation of the reason to the outer world will 
be discovered in Christ who is the organic union of 
God and man. The person of Christ will be seen as 
the concrete resolution of all the fundamental problems 
in philosophy, the highest revelation of God, of man, 
of the world, and their necessary reciprocal relations. 
He, therefore, will furnish the solution of the broadest 
and most comprehensive problem, and must be the 
ultimate principle upon which alone every other prob- 
lem in history, theology or philosophy will be finally 
solved." 

Dr. Henry Harbaugh, referring to the motto borrowed 
from Irenaeus — Unus Christus Jesus Dominus Noster 
Veniens per Universam Dispositionem., Et Omnia in 
Semet Recapitulans — says:* "It is in substance the 
Pauline idea, and based on Eph. i : 10 ; where we are told 
that it was 'the mystery of God's will' that Jesus Christ 
should come in due time, that he might gather together 
in one (lead all things back to their beginning, rehead 
them in himself, and so renew and restore them all in full 
union and harmony with himself, and with themselves); 
all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which 
are on earth ; even in Him. " According to this teach- 
ing of Saint Paul, and of our motto from Irenaeus, 

* Mercersburg Review, 1867, p. 14. 



140 The Mercersbtjrg Theology. 



there is only one principle of unity for all things, Jesus 
Christ. In his incarnation he came, not violently and 
abruptly into the universal order of created things, 
but in harmony with, and according to the original 
aptitudes and determinations of all things; and as the 
catastrophe of the fall had broken all things away from 
their true original head and unity, he gathered back 
and reheaded all things in himself, that so he might 
renew, harmonize and restore all. With him. as with 
Saint Paul, the expression "all things'*' is to be taken 
in its widest sense as comprehending all things, "both 
which are in heaven, and which are on earth." 

Dr. Thomas G. Apple in opening up his great article 
on The Person of Christ, the Supreme Truth of Chris- 
tianity,j says: "The central truth of all Christ's 
teaching was himself, his person and character. In 
this he differed from all other religious teachers. They 
taught a system of truth as something apart from their 
personality. They were heralds of truth who claimed 
to be in some sense inspired, to be from God, but they 
did not claim themselves to be the original source of 
the truth. They did not claim to be more than human, 
but acknowledged themselves to be partakers of the 
frailties and imperfections that pertain to all other 
men. Jesus Christ not only taught the truth, but he 
claimed to be the source, yea, to be himself the truth. 
The main purpose of his ministry in the world was to 
make himself known to men and to be believed by 
men in order that they might be saved. All his other 
teaching was subordinate to this, and constantly led 
up to this. This is the purpose of the four gospels, 

j Reformed Quarterly Review, 1893, p. 179. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 141 



to make him known through his life, his words and his 
works/'' 

Dr. Elnathan E. Higbee writes:* " Divine reve- 
lation in its absolute character, as we have remarked, 
is found in the person of Christ. He is divine manifes- 
tation and divine inspiration in their entire complete- 
ness and unity. He is the acme of the whole process 
of divine revelation; and therefore, the entire frag- 
mentary manifestation before him had ever its object- 
ive ground in him, its controlling type and plasticity. 
He confronts the world, directing all to himself, as 
holding in his own person the whole orb of divine light, 
and the exhaustless fountain of true spiritual life. To 
this one central sun of the whole supernatural world 
mankind is to look. Of this one perennial spring man- 
kind is to drink, whose waters become in it a well 
springing up to everlasting life. All inspiration must 
now direct itself to Christ's absoluteness of manifes- 
tation, and in him the world must come to God's whole 
revelation of himself to mankind. The whole pathway 
of history, the whole sphere of past, present and fu- 
ture, the whole economy of creation from beginning 
to end, must be viewed under this direct illumination. 
In the ineffable glory of the Only Begotten, the whole 
march of the ages from the closed gates of Eden to 
the lifting up of the everlasting doors of Heaven, is 
seen unfolding its mystery of meaning." 

Dr. William Rupp still speaketh : 

"By the Christological principle we understand the 
idea of an eternal union of God and man in the per- 
son of Christ as the medium of God's self-communica- 
tion and self-revelation to the world, and the consum- 

* Mercersburg Review, 1869, p. 257. 



142 The Mercersburg Theology. 

mation of all his ways and works. This implies on 
the one hand that Christ is the principle of the divine 
constitution of the world, and that in him, as St. Paul 
says, all things consist or hold together. He is not an 
accident or an afterthought in the divine world-plan, 
but its central and determinative idea, the real root 
as well as the culminating head of all things. It im- 
plies that Christ is the principle of all sound knowledge 
of God and of his ways and works. We can only know 
God aright in the light and inspiration of Christ. It 
follows, then, that the conception of love must be the 
determinative principle in any true or christian doctrine 
of God. No doctrine of God would be christian at 
all that is ruled by any other conception; as, for in- 
stance, the conception of sovereignty, of honor, or 
of glory. " — The Reformed Quarterly, 1891, p. 46. 

"But while the Holy Ghost is the agent in the 
work of regeneration, as above said, he is not the 
originator of the new life which he therefore com- 
municates to the human soul.* He does not create 
it de nihilo just before planting it in the soul. The 
Spirit is not the author but the giver of life; and 
the life which he gives is that of Christ, the exalted 
and glorified God-man. Christ is the sole fountain 
of spiritual life for the whole human race. We 
must observe, however, that the new life thus lodged 
in man is not to be regarded as holding in separa- 
tion from Christ after it has come to exist in the 
human soul. On the contrary informs a perpetual 



* Mercersburg Review 1873, pp. 149 151 



The Mercersburg Theology. 143 

bond of union between Christ and the soul; so that 
the soul is in Christ as the branch is in the vine, or as 
the members of the human body are in the body, 'Ye 
in me, and I in you'" 

Prof. John C. Bowman:* "In the light of the chris- 
tological principle evolution finds its true interpreta- 
tion. It is not a movement from the highest to the 
lowest plane on earth simply, but a movement from 
eternity to eternity, as comprehended in him who is 
the Alpha and the Omega, the ideal and origin of all 
things, and their teleology. All earthly evolution is 
but a half truth which finds its other half in the con- 
tinuous evolution in the supernatural, heavenly world; 
so that the highest development which may be attain- 
ed on earth is but a preparation for that which is per- 
fect and which is to come." 

Prof. George W. Richards: "The mission of the 
preacher will continue to be the proclamation of the 
revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Christ, proclaimed 
by men, will win his way into their hearts. The print- 
ing press will never take the place of the pulpit. The 
inventions and discoveries of science have neither 
strengthened nor weakened the power of the gospel. 
The facts of revelation are not dependent upon the 
sciences. The church is the bearer of the christian 
life in the personalities of its members. * * * We 
go to church for an experience, a living spirit, touch 
with a personality, not for a theory or dogma. We 
find in him the life which is the light of man, the grace 
which pardons, the love which provides, the truth 



* Reformed Quarterly Review, 1891, p. 288. 



144 The Mercersburg Theology. 



which inspires, the Savior who saves. Christianity is 
an experimental religion, and when it ceases to be that 
it ceases to be apostolic and christian. * * * The 
doubts and skepticism of scholars can be dispelled only 
when they respond to the invitation of the master, 
'Follow me.' In doing that they will not only be 
religious but truly scientific.* 

Prof. William C. Schaeffer: "The christian religion 
is a great and glorious fact. It has touched our hu- 
manity in its profoundest depths. It has influenced 
and changed the course of history. It has uplifted, 
ennobled and purified our human life. It has given 
us newer and higher ideas of God. It has placed be- 
fore us a perfect ideal of our human life in the person 
of its Founder. And in him it has given us such an 
embodiment of truth, virtue and goodness, that we 
now have the full and final revelation of the divine. f 

Prof. Christopher Noss, referring to our Lord's say- 
ing concerning himself (John xvii: 19), says: "In order 
to perfect himself and fit himself to be a complete 
Savior it behooved him to devote himself absolutely 
to God and to men. The degree of self-devotion is the 
measure of moral perfection. Hence, while the whole 
life of our Lord contributes to the final result, his 
death, the climax which marks the absolute charac- 
ter of his devotion, is the cardinal fact without which 
he could not have been made perfect and without 
which all else had been of no avail. It may be added 
that the problem was for our Lord primarily a personal 
one. True, he did all 'for their sakes/ but his moral 

* Reformed Church Review, 1907, p. 118. 
t Reformed Church Review, 1905, p. 162. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 145 



life was genuine, not merely assumed in order to ac- 
complish an ulterior end."* 

The above quotations show converging rather than 
conflicting views of the christo centric principle of Mer- 
cersburg Theology. Indeed it is remarkable how little 
these teachers and writers are in disagreement. The 
four evangelists of the New Testament, under the spe- 
cial guidance of the Holy Spirit, were not more in 
harmony with each other in their narrations of what 
"Jesus began to do and to teach" than are the chief 
apostles of Mercersburg in their new apprehension 
and statements of old christological truth. They 
show diversity of view-points in their christocentric 
apprehension of the same Lord. They all look upon 
Jesus as crowned with the glory and honor of his pre- 
eminence in personality, his uniqueness of character 
as the Christ of God, and his centrality of position in 
the onflow of the world's great history. 

Dr. Rauch's view-point was the essential principle 
of all sound christian ethics; Dr. Schaff saw in Christ 
the primordial principle of church history and recog- 
nized its development in the unfolding of God's king- 
dom on earth; Dr. Nevin's christological reasoning 
started with a recognition of the Word made flesh, 
as the essential principle of a new creation, with all 
that such new creation necessarily and potentially in- 
volved; Dr. KiefTer extolled the offspring of David as 
the second Adam and the full realization of the true 
ideal of divine-human sonship and constitutional head 
of the human race; Dr. Bomberger viewed the incar- 
nation as the foundation of the "only one correct sys- 

* Reformed Church Review, 1906, p. 516. 
10 



146 The Mercersburg Theology. 



tern of theology;" Dr. Gerhart saw in Christ the 
essential element of the major proposition in the syl- 
logism of all logical and theological reasoning; Dr. 
Harbaugh emphasized, with Saint Paul and Irenaeus, 
the fact that Jesus Christ gathered together ail things 
in himself; Dr. Apple recognized Christ's manifest 
consciousness and claim that he was in his own person 
and character the central truth of all that he taught 
and commissioned others to teach concerning himself 
and his kingdom; Dr. Higbee regarded Christ as the 
acme of the whole process of divine revelation of God's 
self and will and ways to man; Dr. Rupp regarded re- 
generation as the result of the communication of 
glorified human life to and in the soul of the believer; 
Prof. Bowman views the christological principle as 
that in which evolution finds its true interpretation; 
Prof. Richards accentuates that syllable in the incar- 
nate Word which makes Christ's manifestation of him- 
self to the christian consciousness and in the christian 
experience of the penitent believer as the most re- 
liable element in christian certitude; Prof. Schaeffer 
views the incarnate mystery as the well authenticated 
fact upon which rests the whole superstructure of our 
holy religion; Prof. Noss regards Christ's self-devo- 
tion to the will of God and the welfare of man as that 
measure of fitness which qualified him to be both 
the great High Priest and bleeding Lamb, the tragic 
climax of whose love-passion could be reached only in 
the death of the Cross. 

The Mercersburg view of Christ's atonement glories 
in the cross and accentuates his sufferings, but not in 
such sense and to such extent as to justify the conclu- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 147 

sion that God saves the world by the merit of misery. 
When viewed in the light of the Redeemer's effulgent 
person, the Cross confronts our rational faith with a 
deeper meaning of that tragic fact. The atoning 
wealth and virtue of the Cross ground themselves in 
the Person and personal sympathy, rather than pri- 
marily in the agony of that great heart whose benev- 
olent pulsations proauce the throbbings of the uni- 
verse. In the absence of such personal interposition 
and exercise of loving self-devotion in obedience unto 
death, the cross would be deprived of its true and full 
value. 

Viewed in this proper light, it is not difficult to see 
that the atonement, as grounding itself in Immanuel's 
person, life and love and self-devotion, even unto death, 
developed itself, moving forward and upward to its 
fuller manifestations in all the cardinal events of his 
history. Christ's person involved the principle of the 
atonement. The angels on Bethlehem's plains were 
better theologians than to overlook the fact that 
" Peace on earth, good will to men" were folded al- 
ready in the swaddling bands of the infant King who 
seemingly had nothing but a tear-drop for his scepter 
and a virgin's arms for his throne. That incarnate 
mystery was the embodiment of the atonement, and 
in that embodiment there was the sure word of pro- 
phecy and promise that the middle wall should be 
broken down, and that our assumed and sanctified 
humanity should "pass the crystal ports of life to 
dwell in endless bliss. " From the manger on, through 
a 1 the time he lived on earth, and especially at the 
close of his life, the atonement was evolved. It was 



148 The Mercersbtjrg Theology. 



born with him at Bethlehem ; with him it grew and in- 
creased as he " increased in wisdom and stature and 
favor with God and man." With him its virtue was 
subjected to a thorough test in the wilderness of temp- 
tation; he carried it with him through the garden to 
the cross, thence he descended with it through hades, 
conquering principalities and powers until he made 
a show of them openly in his resurrection, and as he 
subsequently went up with a shout to complete his 
mediatorial work in the full glorification of our hu- 
manity in the heavenly world. 

Great actions lack integrity 

When sundered from their living soul ; 

Even truth becomes a travesty 

Apart from its essential whole. 
The atonement saving power imparts, 
Since "Christ is all in all" its parts. 

The atonement's not by agony, 
Nor by excruciating pain: 
These show, in fact, the great degree 
Of love in Christ for sinners slain. 

Thus He man's real condition meets, 

And the atonement well completes. 

True orthodoxy never forced 
Asunder parts of God's great plan; 
Great Bethlehem is not divorced 
From Calvary. Great God in man 

Weaves one organic mystery 

Clear down the aisle of history. 



LECTURE VIII. 



Mercersburg Ecclesiology. 

The seventh or preceding lecture, given in this course 
on Mercersburg Theology, treated of truths which were 
viewed from what may be regarded as the peak of high- 
est altitude and the most commanding summit in the 
mountain range of cardinal truths confronting our 
scientific vision, and challenging our continued con- 
sideration. Christology is related to Ecclesiology and 
all other brances of Theology as the queen of the vestal 
virgins that watch the fires at her holy altar. While 
other branches of sacred science are commissioned 
from heaven to keep the true fires from going out and 
the false fires from coming in, Christology furnishes 
and keeps aglow that live coal from the altar of the 
Most High God to whom all the flames of christian 
cultus ascend acceptable and well pleasing in his sight. 
It was clearly shown in the preceding lecture that the 
christo centric principle, advanced and advocated by 
the Mercersburg School, is a distinctive apprehension 
of the great mystery of godliness; that the leading 
representatives of Mercersburg theology were in es- 
sential agreement as to the fundamental principle 
contended for in the distinctive movement now under 
review; that the seeming diversity of sentiment among 
its apostles all vanish away in the light of that consti- 
tutional law of progress which requires the application 

149 



150 The Mercersburg Theology. 



of the said christological principle to all the social, 
civil, moral, and religious questions, that are constantly 
arising in the development of Christ's kingdom on 
earth. Such evolution of the Messiah's kingdom is 
now about to claim our attention as we proceed to con- 
sider what is involved in Ecclesiology. 

The Ecclesiology of any general theological system, 
to be consistent with itself throughout, must be such 
as to stand in a relation of logical sequence to its Chris- 
tology. The Church, as the Redeemer's bride, must 
be viewed as in some sense derived from Christ as 
really as the "mother of all living" proceeded from the 
first Adam. The incarnation of the Logos in human 
nature, the immediate fruit of which union was Im- 
manuel, is viewed as logically necessitating, as its 
complement, a more general incarnation in a mystical 
body and bride, to the intent that the second Adam 
may beget a legitimate progeny and bring many sons 
to glory. Under no other view can the consistent 
theologian and churchman regard the church as the 
legitimate bone and flesh and organic fullness of "Him 
who filleth all in all." Mercersburg Ecclesiology holds 
that the great mystery of godliness — God manifest 
in the flesh — did not reach its terrestrial termination 
in the Lord's ascension from Mount Olivet, but that 
it continued on earth, and still continues in the form 
of the Holy Catholic Church, for the very purpose for 
which the incarnation became a reality, under "the 
power of the highest." The church, under the fore- 
going view, is essential to the completeness of the one 
economy of divine revelation and human redemption. 
If the birth of the bride on the day of Pentecost was 



The Mercersburg Theology. 151 



second in importance to the birth of the Bridegroom 
on Christmas day, it was, nevertheless, just as truly 
an event in the unfolding purpose of Providence, just 
as really a fact in the one economy of grace, just as 
essentially a factor in the history of the world, and just 
as legitimately a sequence to the mystery of Bethlehem, 
as any organic effect can be the product of an organic 
cause. 

The Mercersburg School teaches that the full mean- 
ing of this great mystery did not completely exhaust 
itself before the lifting up of the everlasting gates for 
God manifest in the flesh to enter the heavenly world, 
as though his ascension thereinto was to take the entire 
mystery with him to a realm beyond the outer or earth- 
ly court of the christian sanctuary. Neither does that 
school admit that the concrete system of Christianity 
is a composite economy, comprising many mysterious 
facts in heaven and earth, existing separately until 
they are brought together and comprehended in one 
scheme sufficiently large to serve all the purposes of a 
holy mechanism. The church, in its proper character 
and under a proper view, is considered rather as an 
essential institution, and continuation of the one great 
mystery which, having made its advent into the world 
amidst the shouts of the angels, moves forward to pass 
out and up again only when all the ransomed of the 
Lord shall have entered the heavenly world with songs 
of everlasting joy upon their heads. Each part of 
this one great objective and historic economy grows 
out of its antecedent form, and is followed in organic 
succession by all its consequent and subsequent parts 
until the whole is completely unfolded as a progress- 



152 The Mercersbtjrg Theology. 

ive order of grace and truth. All these, from "the 
communion of saints" to "the life everlasting/' hold 
in the "one body fitly framed together and compacted 
by that which every joint supplieth." 

Furthermore, the church of our Lord Jesus Christ 
incorporates supernatural elements to the extent that 
she is a continuation of the vital principle and force 
of the incarnate mystery on earth, and a consequent 
embodiment of heavenly powers for the full unfolding 
of the purpose for which the Son of God assumed hu- 
man nature. Under no other view can it be seen that 
the tabernacle of God dwells with men. A substitu- 
tion of the supposed spiritual for the really superna- 
tural is the prolific and poisonous source of much skep- 
ticism and infidelity. It is too commonly and popular- 
ly supposed that the supernatural display of God's 
power unto salvation, which began on Mount Sinai, 
was completed at Pentecost, and then envolumed in 
the holiest and best of all books, to be drawn out 
by exegesis, prayer, common sense and pious wit. 

But what are we to understand by the supernat- 
ural? Under one view and in the true relation of 
things, with God there is nothing supernatural. Yet 
we may be consistent in the use of the term. As na- 
turally understood and applied, it means the elements 
and powers of the heavenly world, a world or order 
of being on a higher plane of existence than this ter- 
restrial constitution of things which we call nature and 
which culminates in man. Such entities and forces 
of the higher world are neither unnatural nor super- 
natural in themselves considered, and to themselves 
related. Only, as related, compared, and contrasted 



The Mercersburg Theology. 153 

with the contents of our present order of things may 
they be termed supernatural, as, under such view, 
they really are. 

The ultimate and complete reconciliation and union 
of these two orders of being is the aim and end of the 
great mystery of the incarnation. The latter is the 
"fountain opened up," not only in the house of David, 
but also in the constitution of the moral universe. 
That fountain is the hypostatic constitution of Christ's 
person, the union of the divine and human, the wed- 
ding of the respective heads of all normal principali- 
ties and powers in the heavenly and on the earthly 
planes of existence. This fountain of the superna- 
tural in the natural flows forth like a river, the streams 
(conduits) whereof shall not only "make glad the city 
of God, the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most 
High," but also "that in the dispensation of the ful- 
ness of times he might gather in one all things in Christ, 
both which are in heaven and which are on the earth. " 
This is what God "hath purposed in himself" Eph. i: 
8, 9, and is now fulfilling in the Church. Hence 
the supernatural in the natural. At no time in this 
great movement of the divine purpose in the onflow 
of history have the heavenly or supernatural powers 
been withdrawn. Mercersburg Ecclesiology empha- 
sizes the fact that the working force of this superna- 
tural process is still in the church, and will therein con- 
tinue until Christ shall be all and in all. "Any argu- 
ment for the supernatural, any plea for the christo- 
logical in its sound and right form, to be of full force 
and effect in the end, must b^. at thi same time ec- 
clesiastical also. " * * * "The natural cannot reveal, 



154 The Mercersburg Theology. 



or make certain in any way, the supernatural ; but needs 
this rather to bring out clearly its own sense; and so 
Christ, descending into the world as the fullest and most 
perfect revelation of the supernatural, must be regard- 
ed necessarily as the very principle and source of all 
that sequentially follows. " (Nevin.) 

Because of the supernatural elements in her consti- 
tution the Holy Catholic Church is an object of faith. 
The presence of this continued mystery in the body of 
Christ challenges and elicits faith until it becomes the 
very substance of things hoped for, and until the church 
through the use of her signing and sealing sacraments 
confirms the evidence of those supernatural things 
not savingly seen except as the believer becomes a 
very member incorporate of Christ's mystical body. 
Under such view the church becomes the real bearer 
of the supernatural power of God unto salvation to 
everyone that belie veth. What is the mission and 
meditation of the Holy Ghost but to take the super- 
natural things, fontally in Christ, and show them unto 
everyone that has a potential aptitude, and ear to hear 
what the Spirit saith to the church and through the 
churches? This is but a continuation of the self- 
communication of the Creator to the creature for the 
very purpose of awakening such aptitude of the na- 
tural for the supernatural. Thus the power of the 
Highest, which once overshadowed the virgin mother, 
continues to overshadow virgin-nature, that there may 
be multiplied fruits unto holiness and in the end ever- 
lasting life. And what is the proper preaching of the 
gospel but a form of the revelation of the supernatural 
power of God for the working of faith in the heart? 



The Mercersburg Theology. 155 



Not by might nor by display of natural power, nor 
primarily by the feeble oratory of pulpits, but "by 
my spirit saith the Lord." Hence faith coming by 
the hearing of a message from the inner court of the 
sanctuary proclaiming the presence and imparting the 
power of the heavenly world. Therefore, by such 
faith men are justified because they are regenerated 
and edified by the voice that speaks out of the New 
Testament "tabernacle which the Lord pitched and 
not man." 

Such conception of the church is very different from 
the popular pious notion which makes its unwarranted 
display in the unhistoric organizations and disorgan- 
izations that seemingly exist for little else than to 
demonstrate their religious zeal. Faith in the church 
means the church of and according to the proper sense 
of the apostles' creed. The creed is something more 
than a great outline of doctrines, something more than 
a platform of a dozen religious planks thrown together 
with mechanical precision. While each article is an 
expression of an organic link in a historic chain of un- 
folding truth, the whole is an enshrinement of the one 
great mystery within the Holy Catholic Church, in- 
volving and evolving in orderly succession all the art- 
icles that sequently follow, until the whole revelation 
is completed in "the life everlasting." These things 
Mercersburg Ecclesiology consistently holds and 
teaches; and yet in such way as to neither supplant 
Christ with the church nor substitute the creed for the 
inspired volume. The creed is the fairest and most 
comprehensive expression of Christendom's growing 
consciousness that the tabernacle of God is with men, 



156 The Mercersburg Theology. 



and that he is already dwelling with them. It is 
Christendom's apprehension of the one great mystery 
unfolding itself in the historic onflow of life, in the on- 
ward progress of the mission of Christ in the world, and 
the church's interpretation of the holy scriptures ac- 
cording to and in the highest exercise of evangelical 
freedom. Outside of the church, with no proper faith 
therein, and with no proper respect for the creed, and 
for the truth as " comprehended by all saints," there 
is no evangelical freedom, but rather an actual reali- 
zation of that religious thraldom which has already 
forged the chains and fettered the limbs of a thousand 
sects. The legitimate child's true freedom holds in the 
freedom of the family. Outside of the one, holy 
evangelical family, pious pretensions are " bastards 
and not sons." 

According to the history of the movement now and 
here under review, Mercersburg Ecclesiology was the 
most central point and the most absorbing topic under 
discussion by Mercersburg apostles during the middle 
and latter part of the nineteenth century. This ec- 
clesiological movement grew in part out of an original 
inquiry by Dr. Philip Schaff who already in 1846 pub- 
lished his incisive book on Historic Development. 
Cotemporaneous with or following Dr. Schaff's treat- 
ise on the nature of Church History, came Dr. Nevin's 
profound inquiry into the nature of the church itself. 
His thorough investigation of the subject led him to 
write his articles on Cyprian; to institute an inquiry 
into the governing principles and essential elements 
of Primitive Christianity; his controversy with O. E. 
Bronson, the newly fledged champion of Roman Cath- 



The Mebcersburg Theology. 157 



olicism ; his merciless exposure of the sect system under 
the various false pretenses of abstract Bible Christian- 
ity; and his general arraignment of " Anticreed Heresy' ' 
in all its Puritanic and pietistic forms. 

Throughout this memorable campaign in the ec- 
clesiological wars of the Lord, Dr. Nevin was by far 
the leading champion, and by pre-eminence the heaven- 
plumed knight of righteous valor. Under the proper- 
ly ecclesiological aspect of the more general discussion 
he advanced the standard almost single-handed and 
alone, until his disciples rallied to his support with a 
heroism worthy of his distinguished leadership. Dr. 
Bomberger was one of the first to publicly defend him 
against his " Antagonists " in the Mercersburg Review 
of 1853. As the discussion advanced, it widened its 
range and traversed new fields of scientific inquiry. 
Ecclesiology called for a development of its correlated 
Christology, and these moved logically forward under 
the banner of one primordial organic truth in the furth- 
er development of corresponding views respecting the 
sacraments and a christian cultus consistent with Mer- 
cersburg theology in the general scope and meaning 
of the term. The following quotations from their 
writings show both the essential oneness of principle 
and the manifoldness of form under which some of 
the leading apostles advocated and advanced the dis- 
tinctive ecclesiology of the Mercersburg school. 

Dr. John W. Nevin: "As the mystery of the church 
itself is no object of mere speculation, and rests not 
in any outward sense or testimony only, but must be 
received as an article of faith which proceeds with in- 
ward necessity from the higher mystery of the incar- 



158 The Mercersburg Theology. 



nation, so also the grand distinguishing attributes of 
the church, as we have them in the creed, carry with 
them the same kind of inward necessary force for the 
mind in which the creed truly prevails. They are 
not brought from abroad, but spring directly from the 
constitution of the fact itself with which faith is here 
placed in communication. The idea of the church as 
a real object for faith, and not a fantastic notion only 
for the imagination, involves the character of cathol- 
icity, as well as that of truth and holiness, as something 
which belongs inseparably to its very nature. To have 
true faith in the church at all, we must receive it as 
one bodjr, apostolic and catholic. To let go any of 
these attributes in our thought, is necessarily to give 
up at the same time the being of the church itself as 
an article of faith, and to substitute for it a mere 
chimera of our own brain under its sacred name. Hence 
the tenacity with which the church has ever held fast 
to this title of catholic as her inalienable distinction 
over against all mere parties or sects bearing the chris- 
tian name. Had the title been only of accidental or 
artificial origin, no such stress would have been laid 
on it, and no such force would have been felt always 
to go along with its application. It has had its reason 
and authority all along, not so much in what it may 
have been made to mean exactly for the under- 
standing in the way of formal definition and reflec- 
tion, as in the living sense rather of Christianity 
itself." Mercersburg Review, 1851, pp. 1, 2. 

Dr. Philip Schaff: "The main question of our time, 
is concerning the nature of the church itself, in its 
relation to the world and to single christians. The 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



159 



church is the body of Christ. This expresses her com- 
munion with her head, and also the relation of her 
members to one another. In the first respect she is 
an institution founded by Christ, proceeding from his 
loins and animated by his spirit, for the glory of God 
and the salvation of man; through which alone, as 
its necessary organ, the revelation of God in Christ 
becomes effective in the history of the world. Hence 
out of the church, as there is no Christianity, there 
can be no salvation. In the second respect, she is like 
every other body, a living unity of different members ; 
a communion of faith and love visible as well as in- 
visible, external as well as internal, of the most mani- 
fold individualities, gifts and powers, pervaded with 
the same spirit and serving the same end. The de- 
finition implies farther, that as the life of the parents 
flows forward in the child, so the church also is the 
depository and continuation of the earthly human life 
of the Redeemer, in his threefold office of Prophet, 
Priest and King. Hence she possesses, like her found- 
er, a divine and human, an ideal and real, a heavenly 
and earthly nature; only with this difference, that in 
her militant stage, freedom from error cannot be pre- 
dicated of her in the same sense as of Christ ; that is, 
she possesses the principle of holiness and the full truth, 
mixed, however, still with sin and error." Principles 
of Protestantism, pp. 177, 178. 

Dr. J. A. H. Bomberger, writing on The Rule of 
Faith: "Let us then turn in conclusion to a brief 
consideration of what may be termed the evangelical 
doctrine upon our subject. This title as given to it 
will be found, at least, the view which the true church 



160 The Mercersburg Theology. 



has always maintained, either in theory or practice, 
as against the errors represented by the false systems 
which have been noticed. * * * The Bible was 
never given to be the only authoritative guide and 
directory for the individual christian. It has been so 
common to maintain the opposite of this, by some of 
the warmest and sincerest defenders of evangelical 
Protestantism against the aggression of Popery and 
infidelity, that the assertion made may startle some 
of our friends. Others may use it as a sort of Treves 
coat, to create a panic with. But as long as we have 
the Bible itself, and their own ecclesiastical institutions 
and practice on our side in making it, there is not much 
need for fear. * * * Another fact to be considered 
here is that the Church is as truly divine as the Divine 
Word. * * * But why should we refuse to ad- 
mit this? Is the church a human institution devised 
and formed by man? Is her life a merely human and 
earthly product? Is not her head a divine head? Is 
not her spirit a divine spirit? Are not her doctrines 
(as they were proclaimed before a syllable of them was 
recorded) divine doctrines? Are not her sacraments 
and rites of worship all from the same source? Are 
not her members divinely called and divinely renewed, 
and temples in which the Holy Spirit deigns to dwell? 
Is she not continually pervaded, in every artery and 
vein, in heart, and thought, and muscle, by the pres- 
ence of him who has promised to be with her always, 
even to the end of the world? Is she, finally, not the 
kingdom of God, of heaven, of Christ? Can we say 
more than this of the sacred oracles? * * * A 
third fact in the settlement of our subject is, that the 



The Mercersburg Theology. 161 



church is an animate body, a living organism." M. 
R., 1849, pp. 367-369. 

Dr. Moses Kieffer: " Christianity, starting as it 
does, in the incarnation, unfolds itself historically in 
the form of the church. The church is the fruit of 
the Savior's birth, his life, death, and resurrection, 
as it is written: 'When thou shalt make his soul an 
offering for sin, he shall prolong his days, and the 
pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hands.' Isa. 
liii: 10. We have a striking type of this in the thirty- 
first chapter of Deuteronomy. We there learn that 
when Moses had completed the law of God, and had 
written it in a book, he gave it to the Levites, who bore 
the ark of the Lord, and commanded that it should 
be placed beside the ark of the covenant within the 
tabernacle. A beautiful emblem this of the fact that 
the inspired volume, the Book of the Law and the 
Prophets, of the Evangelists and Apostles, is to be 
kept sacred in the church, the true ark of the cove- 
nant of grace. It folio ws from this that as the rela- 
tion between Christ and the scriptures is internal and 
vital, that between the Bible and the church must be 
inseparable also. The church, which is the body of 
Christ, is not only the bearer of his life, but also of his 
truth; not the truth simply as comprehended in her 
constitution and unfolded in her history, but the truth 
also as it is given in the Scriptures. The Bible is the 
lamp which the bride constantly holds in her hand 
while she is going out to meet the glorious Bridegroom. 
Mercersburg Review, 1860, p. 467. 

Dr. Henry Harbaugh: "A truly devout and earn- 
est spirit, a spirit that has faith to feel the solemn 
11 



162 The Mercersburg Theology. 

mysteries of the world to come as they lie hidden in 
the 'church of the first born' to which 'we have 
come/' must be filled with a reverence that is not too 
strongly called 'awful and tremendous!' The super- 
natural born into the natural, the heavenly and eternal 
revealing itself in power and glory on earth and in 
time, silently transforming men and the world into 
the image of the heavenly, while the angels bend down 
and 'desire to look into' mysteries which were never 
seen in heaven; 'principalities and powers in heavenly 
places learning by the church the manifold wisdom' 
which before they never knew; while all the hosts of 
heaven shout in joy, as in the progress of the history 
of the church, seal after seal is opened, and trump 
after trump announces new victories, until, when the 
last shout of triumph is heard over vanquished death 
and hell, one grand chorus shall fill all heaven, 'as it 
were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice 
of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunder- 
ings, saying Alleluia! for the Lord God Omnipotent 
reigneth. ' Before such powers now lodged and work- 
ing in the church, our faith stands in humble and si- 
lent reverence." M. R., 1856, p. 36. 

Dr. Thomas G. Apple: "This, after all, is what 
constitutes the church an object of faith in the sense 
of the creed, that it is a real kingdom of grace, in which 
divine and heavenly powers are constantly at work. 
He, therefore, who apprehends the true mystical ele- 
ment in religion, must have faith in the church. At 
war with this mystical element in religion is rational- 
ism, which is at the same time at war with all true 
churchliness. Whenever the mind refuses to concede 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



163 



anything above nature and reason in the various phe- 
nomena of religion, there is an end of all mystery. 
The miracles recorded in the Old and New Testaments 
are then explained away as mere natural events, or 
at most deceptive appearances; the word and sacra- 
ments are divested of their true character, and reli- 
gion turned into a delusion. A rationalist in the full 
sense of the word, must be also an infidel. But the 
poison of rationalism may diffuse itself in combination 
with a measure of true faith. This is the case largely 
we think with Protestantism. The intellect has been 
made to play so large a part in its history from the 
beginning, as a reaction against its neglect and en- 
slavement previously, that there is great danger of 
trusting too much in its own light." Mercersburg 
Review, 1860, pp. 51, 52. 

Dr. Emanuel V. Gerhart: "The church is a self- 
perpetuating communion; not the ministry of and by 
itself, not the lay membership of and by itself, but the 
church as a whole is self-perpetuating. Self-perpet- 
uating the church is because of her vital connection 
with Christ in the fellowship of the Spirit. By the 
Spirit the church lives in communion with Christ, 
from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together 
through that which every joint supplieth, according 
to the working in due measure of each several part, 
maketh the increase of the body unto the building up 
of itself in love. Eph. iv: 15, 16. There is indeed 
no true church of Christ without a ministry; still the 
church is a broader, a more fundamental reality than 
an order of christian men, however necessary to her 
existence. An order of men is but one part, one con- 



164 The Mercersburg Theology. 



dition of the christian community; and a part of an 
organism is less than the whole. The ministry does 
not uphold the church; that prerogative may be pre- 
dicated alone of her Founder. There is more of truth 
in the proposition that the church upholds the minis- 
try. The ministry stands in the communion of the 
church somewhat as the head conditions and is con- 
ditioned by the human body. The same general prin- 
ciple of judgment is valid in its application to the laity. 
Laymen did not at will originate the church. Nor 
did laymen in the beginning organize her communion, 
nor did they introduce any distinguishing elements 
of her organization. Nor has this subordinate rela- 
tion of laymen undergone any change in the progress 
of history. As the faith and will of laymen did not 
originate the church, so neither does her perpetuity 
depend upon their will and judgment. The reverse 
proposition expresses the truth. The perpetuity of 
the laity is consequent upon the perpetuity of the 
church. The church upholds the membership; the 
membership does not uphold the church. True, as 
there is no church without a ministry, so there is no 
church of Christ without a laity. Laymen are an in- 
dispensable part of her integrity ; but the church is a 
profounder, a more potent mystery than either minis- 
ters or laymen. The tree bears the branches. The 
organism vitalizes and sustains the several parts. Je- 
sus Christ, not the minister, not the laymen, but the 
enthroned Christ, perpetuates his mystical body. This 
spiritual organism he perpetuates dynamically; there 
is, by virtue of his vital unbroken fellowship in the 
spirit with his people, laymen and ministers, a fellow- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 165 



ship more original than their consciousness, more es- 
sential than volition." Institutes of Religion, Vol. 
II, pp. 522, 523. 

Dr. Elnathan E. Higbee: "The Church as a divine 
constitution, embodying, and thus making continuous, 
the incarnation, must ever work as a supernatural 
principle, taking up and incorporating into itself, by 
virtue of its own power, the entire life of the world, 
which as natural cannot by any process within itself 
reach or even apprehend the supernatural. Under 
this aspect we have conceived the church to present 
herself as an object of faith in the creed. She comes 
from above, challenging our regard as containing in 
herself the full revelation of the kingdom of God. The 
whole force of the new creation in Christ, becomes op- 
erative in her bosom only, as the proper channel of 
its continuation, and the living organ of its develop- 
ment. " 

"This whole view, it is plain to be seen, bases it- 
self upon the fact, that in the incarnation the possi- 
bility of this is in some way made real; for if we have 
here no supernatural force entering in a real and living 
way into the constitution of nature, we must discard 
both the church and the incarnation as proper objects 
of faith, at least in the sense of the creed. If the in- 
carnation does not prove itself to be a divine fact, 
containing in itself the sure evidence of its perpetuity . 
and necessitating by its very existence and nature an 
organism like that of the church, to carry forward and 
accomplish its own design by being permeated at this 
very point with its own force, we are absolutely com- 
pelled to consider the church a human institution mere- 



166 The Mercersburg Theology. 



ly, capable, it is true, of being an object of experience, 
but never an object of faith." Mercersburg Review, 
1852, p. 578. 

Dr. William Rupp: "The Kingdom of God, as 
manifest in the world through the church, is an actual 
order of existence, something substantial and real; 
not an abstraction, not a thought, notion or theory, 
as it is so often supposed to be. * * * The king- 
don of God is as real, as substantial an order of exis- 
tence as any kingdom of nature. It is a real constitu- 
tion, not an invisible abstraction, or logical notion, 
an order of invisible, spiritual powers, 'powers of the 
world to come, ' existing, however, in visible, tangible 
form. And that form, of course, none other than the 
holy, catholic, apostolic church, which is the body of 
Christ, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. * * * 
As a real kingdom or sphere of being, an actual order 
of substantial existence, the church, like any king- 
dom of nature, must have power in itself to " be fruit- 
ful and multiply," and to continue itself in its own or- 
der; it must have the power of self-propagation, of 
course not in a physical but in a spiritual way, if it 
is to continue its existence at all and accomplish its 
mission in the world. There are those who, failing 
to apprehend the church as an actual, self-existent, 
self-propagating constitution, imagine that it may oc- 
casionally perish and become extinct, and then, after 
having been extinct for ages perhaps, they suppose 
that it may be resurrected again and made to flourish 
by men going directly to the Bible for its foundation; 
or that a new Pentecostal miracle may be obtained 
and a new church started. Could any thought be more 



The Mercersburg Theology. 167 

absurd, and also, at the same time, more profane than 
this?" Mercersburg Review, 1871, pp. 470, 471. 

Young Gentlemen: In concluding this lecture I 
would most earnestly emphasize these essential fea- 
tures of Mercersburg Ecclesiology as worthy of all 
acceptation. True, it has many things in common 
with some other apprehensions of the great mystery 
of godliness; yet as a system it eliminates more ec- 
clesiastical error and incorporates more ecclesiastical 
truth than anything previously set forth as a sane and 
sound conception of the nature and mission of the 
holy catholic church. It is in agreement with the 
teachings of the holy scriptures, and in harmony with 
the principles of sound philosophy. It fortifies itself 
in the views maintained by the early fathers, is strong 
in the endorsement of much taught by Calvin and some 
others of the Reformers, and rests in the bosom of the 
Apostles' Creed as historically interpreted. It is pre- 
eminently that apprehension of the church in which 
she can be consistently spoken of as the body of Christ, 
the bride of the glorified Redeemer, and the very em- 
bodiment of his kingdom now in the v^orld for the very 
purpose of assimilating and transforming the world 
into that which must be hereafter. 

That will be a sad period in the history of Protes- 
tantism when the church permits her interest in true 
churchliness to wane, or allows that interest to become 
morbid by a rationalistic or sentimental substitution 
of humanitarian elements for the supernatural and 
essential contents of genuine Christianity. In order 
to avoid such calamity it is not necessary that the 
controversy over the nature of the holy catholic and 



168 The Mercersburg Theology. 

apostolic church be renewed and continued under the 
high pressure of religious polemics as it raged during 
the latter part of the last century. The case calls 
rather for a more scriptural apprehension, consistent 
profession, and logical demonstration of the faith once 
delivered to the primitive saints and contended for by 
the immortal fathers of the anti-Nicene period of 
Christendom. It is not enough that her congrega- 
tions and members repeat the creed as a political party 
may recite a fundamental plank in its platform of 
principles adopted for a campaign. It should be kept 
alive in the consciousness of her membership, charac- 
terize her cultus, and intone her literature, until it is 
echoed down to the end of time, that the holy catholic 
church occupies a place in the creed of Christendom as 
an article of faith, as really and as necessarily as Jesus 
Christ is the primary object of faith unto salvation 
to every one that thus believeth. No amount of re- 
ligious zeal or evangelistic church-work, or conven- 
tional dress parade will compensate for the abandon- 
ment of faith in the supernatural entities and elements 
enshrined in the Redeemer's bride, and incorporated 
in his body of which all christians are very members 
incorporate. 

The King's daughter must be humbly conscious of 
the fact that according to her ideal she is all glorious 
within, before the King can admire the charms of her 
external loveliness. In the church, as in the state, 
zeal for territorial extension or imperial expansion 
should never be so unduly exercised and so unpro- 
portionately applied as to result in virtual neglect of 
that equally important internal growth in a conscious- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



169 



ness of her nature and real mission in the world It 
is the duty of the church to lengthen her lines, and this 
she can do only in the proportion that she strengthens 
her stakes and confirms herself in her apostolic and 
historic way-marks, rather than by driving so many 
new stakes into the sand of religious sentiment alism. 
There is no waste of power by a consistent persistence 
in the investigation of those questions which pertain 
to her nature, and a consequently logical application 
of her energies to the work which the Father has given 
her to do. In fact, those energies can be advantage- 
ously used for the more practical purposes of the Gos- 
pel only in the proportion that they are applied in a 
manner logically agreeable to the principles of philos- 
ophy that underlie the whole ground system and his- 
toric movement of human redemption from the 
closing of the garden gates of Eden to the opening 
of the pearly portals of the New Jerusalem. 



LECTURE IX. 



Mercersburg Soteriology. 

In the last lecture it was contended, if not clearly 
shown, that the grace and truth brought into the world 
by the incarnation of the eternal Logos is perpetuated 
and carried forward by the Holy Ghost in the holy 
catholic church to accomplish the grand purpose for 
which the second person of the adorable trinity entered 
into the bosom of our humanity and placed himself 
under the limitations of time and space. It was claim- 
ed that without such perpetuation in such concrete 
and historic form there would be no evidence at hand 
for either faith or reason to note any march of progress 
in the successive events of the world, showing that 
the church is in the world, Christ is in the church, and 
God is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. 

As Jesus Christ "gave himself for the church that 
he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of 
water by the Word," and thus bring many sons to 
glory, so does the wealth of the christological principle, 
fontally in his person, pass over into the church as the 
economy of grace and truth, where it finds its proper 
and more practical Soteriological province in promot- 
ing the salvation of the individual, as well as in the 
healing of the nations. Christology, Ecclesiology, and 
Soteriology are inseperable, though distinct concep- 

170 



The Mercersburg Theology. 171 

tions of the one great " eternal purpose which he pur- 
posed in Christ Jesus our Lord." Eph iii: 11. And 
herein consists one of the peculiar elements of the 
wealth and beauty of the Mercersburg system of chris- 
tian thinking. It neither holds in mechanical abstrac- 
tion, nor puts asunder what God has joined organically 
together in one concrete and complete economy of 
heavenly powers. 

Soteriology implies haniartialogy. In the moral 
realm a health agency presupposes a moral malady. 
In defining and treating of the sad reality of sin, Mer- 
cersburg Soteriology does not exhaust its energy in 
an effort to go back to the first link in the fatal chain 
that leads on to the awful fact of universal corruption 
and down to the ultimate wages of sin in consequent 
death. Whilst it regards sinful humanity as an or- 
ganic whole, it rejects the doctrine of Augustine, that 
all mankind had become a "massa perditionis. " It 
is rather in full sympathy with the Heidelberg Con- 
fession touching its treatment of transgression as en- 
tailing "sins and miseries" upon the members of our 
fallen race. Sin is recognized and emphasized as hav- 
ing, under one view, the character of a disease, for 
which the individual members of the body, as an organ- 
ic whole, need soteriological treatment in order to a 
full deliverance. In this respect Mercersburg The- 
ology differs from Anselmic, Calvinistic, and the earl- 
ier Puritanic teachings, which, under their meta- 
physical explanations, appeared to have no greater 
mission on earth than to attempt the solution of the 
mysterious problems of the infinite by explaining the 
jurisprudence of heaven's high court, expounding the 



172 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



principles of the divine government, and extracting 
secrets from the bosom of Deity. 

As the Mercersburg school advanced in the logical 
development of what was originally and principally 
nominated in the bond, somo of its later apostles em- 
phasized the claim that the province of Soteriology 
was broad enough to include not only the application 
of the divine law, but also such treatment as was nec- 
essary to make man every whit whole. The Gospel 
is thus regarded not only as a medicine to heal, but 
also a food to nourish. As standing in the first Adam 
men are regarded as incomplete, and incompleteness 
is considered a defect which can be remedied only by 
a growing up to perfection in the second Adam. "Ye 
are complete in Him." All this is included in and 
emphasized by Mercersburg Soteriology. 

As little as it endorses the position of St. Augustine 
and others, that sin was an essential part of the Sup- 
ralapsarian purpose of God, so little is Mercersburg's 
teaching respecting hamartialogy in agreement with 
the more modern deductions and false theories of 
evolution, which regard sin as merely man's failure to 
arise out of his supposed state of animalism into an 
attainable condition of normal humanity. Sin is view- 
ed, not as a necessity, but as having its origin in a pos- 
sibility necessary to true freedom. If sin were a ne- 
cessity, it were not sin ; at least there would be no culp- 
ability connected therewith. Neither is death, as the 
result of sin, necessary in the moral universe, except 
in the sense of a logical or consequential fruit 
of that which had already existed as a possibility in 
the undeveloped, potential bud of man's moral, in- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



173 



tellectual and volitional constitution, so "fearfully and 
wonderfully made." 

Mercersburg Hamartialogy necessitates and brings 
with it a correlated theory or corresponding view of 
Soteriology. That theory, in its view of one phase 
of the sad reality, is not out of agreement with Isaiah 
i: 5-6, that "the whole head is sick and the whole 
heart faint, from the sole of the foot even unto the 
head there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises 
and putrifying sores;" neither is the Mercersburg 
view out of line with the teachings of the "Great Phy- 
sician," who came to call "sick" sinners to repentance. 
Matt, ix: 12. Such moral malady is not cured by 
mere forensic pardon and justification. As an effect 
of the awful catastrophe of the fall, the disease calls 
for something more than abstract pathology and pre- 
scriptive placebos to restore the suffering patient to 
a condition of moral health and completeness. 

Both consistency and logical necessity require that 
the Mercersburg view of sin and its theory of soteriol- 
ogical treatment be congruous with its psychology. 
Any other hamartialogy would be an old and worn 
out patch on a new garment. It has already been 
shown, in Lecture VI, that the will of man was designed 
to be, and is constitutionally, a self-determining power. 
It is no blind, necessary force; neither can it be moved 
to action by some foreign arbitrary propulsion with- 
out violence to the essential law of its being. It must 
itself move freely in its own way, and yet it is bound 
by its own consent, and in the exercise of its own voli- 
tion, which, when acting in conformity to such law, 
results in self-violation or sin, and only when exercised 



174 The Mercersburg Theology. 



in harmony therewith carries such free agent up into 
the higher realm of confirmed freedom. This view of 
its origin makes more manifest "the exceeding sin- 
fulness of sin" as a malady in human nature, and calls 
for a most thorough soteriological treatment in order 
to radical removal. 

As belonging to the general group of theological 
sciences, soteriology, as the science of health, is path- 
ologically applicable to the disease of sin, and implies 
the therapeutic administering of the only indicated 
remedy for the healing of those v/ho are afflicted with 
the dreadful malady; and as mere science, as such, is 
unable either to discover or apply an efficient remedy 
to a disease which has the possibility oi its origin and 
seat in the ethical realm of being, the case must of ne- 
cessity be passed over into the more proper province 
of the Gospel, which is the only power of God unto 
salvation. And as it is true that the Gospel is always 
apprehended and applied according to the school of 
theological thought that molds and governs such ap- 
prehension, much depends upon the theological sys- 
tem in which and according to which the Gospel rem- 
edy is applied. Is the Gospel most advantageously 
administered under the Romish, or in the more evan- 
gelical Protestant system? If in the latter, is it in 
the churchly, or in the unchurchly system, falsely fly- 
ing the Protestant banner, that the morally sick and 
suffering patient derives the greatest benefit from the 
great physician? 

But are there really two ways under heaven given 
among men whereby Jesus saves his people from their 
sins? Is there not rather but one divine way or sys- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 175 

tern in contrast with a humanitarian scheme? The 
system is God's way; the general scheme includes many 
babels. The system presupposes that sin is not a 
mere abstraction, and accordingly teaches thet truth 
and grace for the removal of error and sin are present 
in the world in concrete form; while the mere scheme 
implies that truth and grace are to be seen through 
something supposed to be faith, by gazing up into 
heaven where they are imagined to exist as abstrac- 
tions apart from anything like a divine institution. 
The system holds that there is a veritable institution 
or constitution of heavenly and entitive forces, and 
operative functions, and that it is an organism, the 
body of Christ, including divine-human agencies as 
well as very members incorporate fitly joined together 
and compacted by that which every joint supplieth; 
the scheme holds that abstract truth and grace ara 
so charged with the infinite elements of omnipotent 
benevolence for the salvation of the world as to see no 
need that there should be a New Testament house of 
David in the form of the holy catholic church in which 
to open up the flowing fountain for sin and unclean- 
ness. The system holds that the pardoning of sin and 
the cleansing of the sinner from all unrighteousness, 
while it is, under one view, a personal matter between 
Christ and himself by the meditation of the 
Holy Ghost, the soteriological process takes place in 
the church; the scheme is too generally found in sym- 
pathy with the false assumption that sinners can just 
as well have their sins washed away by some forensic 
mandate from tri3 skies and then be added to the church, 
because they were already saved outside of the church. 



176 The Mercersburg Theology. 



The system teaches, as in the order of the creed, that 
in its incipient stage for the penitent believer "the 
communion of saints," grounding itself in a necessary 
life-communion with Christ, is before and in order to the 
"forgiveness of sins;" the scheme in practice teaches 
that the forgiveness of sin is a condition necessarily 
preparatory to the sinner's entrance into a saving re- 
lation with Christ, and a partaking of that righteous- 
ness which is the ground of his justification — a circular 
syllogism of sophistry and pious nonsense. The system 
teaches, that the sinner enters into the Kingdom of God 
by being born of the water and the spirit; the scheme 
encourages the attempt to climb up some other way. 
The system, with St. Peter, exhorts men to "be bap- 
tized for the remission of sins," and, with the Nicene 
Fathers, to "confess one baptism for the remission of 
sin;" that in baptism the sinner is brought into such 
relation to Christ as to make it both possible and ob- 
ligatory "to utterly abolish the whole body of sin" by 
the dying of the old man and the quickening of the 
new; the scheme, on the other hand, either denies that 
baptism was designed for the communication of such 
great grace, tolerates it as harmless in its formal use, 
or performs the ceremony as signifying something 
which is supposed to have already taken place without 
the sealing ordinance. 

How far this modern scheme of false soteriology 
is the fruit of false views already present, if not preva- 
lent, in the early church, is not so easily determined. 
He must indeed be an expert in the analysis of history 
who can distinctly trade out the relation of cause to 
effect, from the supralapsarianism of Hippo's bishop, 



The Mercersburg Theology. 177 



the Pelagianism of the British monk, or the seed of 
anti-christian Arianism that germinated in the erratic 
brain of the Alexandrian presbyter. One thing, how- 
ever, is certain: that some of the most deleterious her- 
esies and teachings, if not actually transmitted in the 
veins of the church herself, came down the aisle of the 
ages until the sixteenth century found them pervert- 
ing the truth in the most holy place in the tabernacle 
of the living God ; and even now the twentieth century 
is called upon to witness the alarming fact that false 
soteriology is interwoven with the fibers of our most 
zealous and stalwart Protestantism. 

As already intimated, false soteriology is, at least 
in part, the fruit or effect of a false hamartialogy. 
Just as quackery enters the broad and respectable 
field of therapeutics, and applies its shallow empir- 
cism because of a defective diagnosis of the disease 
under treatment, so does an unsound soteriology lead 
to an unscientific and unwarranted conclusion as to 
the exceeding sinfulness of sin. In the combination 
of causes leading up to such false and futile attempt 
to heal the disease of sin without a proper application 
of the heaven-ordained and only efficient remedy, is 
Pelagianism, which, when conceived in the false ra- 
tiocinations of the fallen human intellect, bringeth 
forth incipient death in the form of rationalism and 
sickening sentimentalism. These two are the twin 
daughters of a degenerate parentage. Rationalism 
substitutes the human reason for the divine will, while 
sentimentalism makes feeling the test of truth. The 
combination of the two is the anti christ of modern 
times. Its apostles are numerous, its disciples are le- 
12 



178 The Mercersburg Theology. 



gion, and its consequences appalling. It is blind to 
the chronic malady of original sin, ignores the super- 
natural in the saving remedy brought down from heav- 
en, and sets aside the complete fullness of the old Gos- 
pel as the only power of God unto man's salvation 
from the disease, engendered and entailed in the ter- 
rible catastrophe of the fall. This was the alarming 
weakness of Christendom two-thirds of a century ago. 
Rome was pushing the old Gospel remedy still further 
back upon the dusty shelves of her traditional depos- 
itory. Oxford was flirting with the scarlet-clad mis- 
tress upon the bank of the Tiber. The victims of re- 
ligious despondency sent up their plaintive cries to 
heaven : 

"Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, 
Lead thou me on: 

The night is dark, and I am far from home, 
Lead thou me on." 

Protestantism was in danger of floundering in a treach- 
erous sea. 

Just then a voice was heard from Mercersburg, cry- 
ing out in the wilderness of unscriptural, unhistoric, 
and unsacramental religiousness, and down into the 
valley of dry bones: " Stand ye in the ways, and see, 
and ask for the old paths," or, more properly, for the 
old principles of Him whose goings forth have been of 
old from everlasting, and for the whole glorious Gos- 
pel whose evolution must continue in a more truly so- 
teriological form until there shall be no more sinners 
to save and no more years to roll away. 

The Mercersburg school of christo-philosophic 
thought never claimed to have originated any new sci- 



The Mercersbtjrg Theology. 179 



ence of hamartialogy, to have pointed out any new- 
remedy for the putting away of sin; neither did it 
ever pretend to have discovered any new light in the 
firmament of soteriology. It rather proclaimed its 
conviction that the old light had been placed under 
the bed of false tradition, and under the bushel of a 
false religious conception, to such an extent as to be 
in danger of going out for want of proper ventilation 
in the ecclesiastical dormitory. Such ventilation was 
begun by the first apostles of Mercersburg Soteriology. 
Its introduction of a truly evangelical atmosphere be- 
gan to arouse the dormant energies of the christian 
world and startle its dreaming inhabitants from 
their morbid state of religious decadency. There was 
a great reason why Christendom should have been 
thus incited into healthful inquiry and activity, that 
it might lay aside the works of darkness and put on the 
armor of light. The necessity extended, in some form, 
from the low churchism of New England, to the high 
churchianity of Rome. Great violence had gradually 
worked itself into the heaven-appointed order of things. 
The divine system of human redemption had been 
carved into sections. What God had joined together 
man had put asunder by an unwarranted process of 
ecclesiastical vivisection. What was essential to the 
whole Gospel had been separated into parts. The 
priestly and the prophetic functions of the church had 
been disjoined. 

As the culmination of false ecclesiasticism, Rome had 
reached that point in the trend of her tyrannical usur- 
pation as to withold the light of the written word from 
the laity of the church. Hence the pulpit was con- 



180 The Mercersbtjrg Theology. 

sistently crowded back into one corner of the cathed- 
ral, and the altar pushed into a correspondingly undue 
prominence for a still greater display of prelatic pre- 
tensions. As the revealed Word of God was relegated 
to the rear, the ritualistic works of man were pressed 
to the front. As the sacrifice of the Cross was no 
longer proclaimed from the pulpit, the sacrilege of the 
mass was paraded before the altar until it was denounc- 
ed as an " accursed idolatry." As the number of ser- 
mons grew less, the number of sacramental ceremonies 
increased. As the sweet music which divine benevo- 
lence had rendered from Calvary was lost in the lulling 
tones and cadences of a degenerate cultus, the ears 
of the people were saluted with the empty stage-thun- 
der of the cathedral. As the prophet grew silent in 
the services of the church, the drawling tone of the 
priest became a whining cant in the carnal claptrap 
of the ecclesiastical theatre. The light that was or- 
dained to go forth from the preaching of the pure Gos- 
pel, having been hid under the bushel of papal corrup- 
tion, there was an opportunity in consequent darkness 
for a play of monstrous powers and a display of mor- 
bific vanity. Thus it was that the Redeemer's bride 
was gradually led to forget the heavenly promise and 
neglect the sacred injunction of her divine bridegroom, 
that "all her children should be taught of God;" and 
in consequence of such culpable negligence, both the 
cultus and the culture of the ecclesiastical family were 
warped and dwarfed from the beauty of holiness into 
the fulness and deformity of historic degeneracy. In- 
stead of combining the warmth of devotion with the 
beauty of the sanctuary, the mount of prayer was per- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 181 

mitted to lose its towering peak in the coid sublimity 
of beautiful snow. 

This state of things in the Romish church helped to 
mature the necessity for the Reformation, and the 
sixteenth century movement in Christendom became, 
in the way of reaction, the occasion for an erratic 
counter-trend, in the name and under the fostering 
care of Protestantism. The unwarranted extreme of 
the counter-movement wrought itself out somewhat 
scientifically in the homeland, where, in the course of 
time it created sad havoc with much of the Protestant 
orthodoxy of Germany, sowed the seeds for the bloody 
harvest of the reign of terror in France, encouraged 
deism and free thinking in England, crossed the ocean 
in the Mayflower, bloomed in the fertile soil of American 
sentimentalism, and bore its multiformity of fruits 
in sect and schism and pietism, until the evangelical 
church called for a thorough analysis of her contents 
and a new definition of her charter, which it received 
in "The Principles of Protestantism," in 1845 by Dr. 
Philip Schaff , and in {< A Vindication of the Idea of His- 
toric Development'' by the same author in 1846. 

History confirms the truth of the assertion that 
many of the false features and forms of Protestantism 
are the very opposite of heresies developed in the mid- 
dle ages in the Roman Catholic Church. As Rome- 
gave undue prominence to the altar and made unwar- 
ranted account of its proper position in the soterio- 
logical economy of human redemption, so has false and 
negative Protestantism pushed the significant shrine 
of the holy place into the background, and crowded 
the pulpit into a prominence out of proportion with 



182 The Mercersburg Theology. 

the equally essential elements, factors, and functions 
in the full constitution of God's remedial system. 

In the Romish system, both before and since the 
Reformation, the priesthood, as but one essential fac- 
tor in the full idea of the christian ministry, has been 
exalted above the prophetic office. Upon the other 
hand, the false development given to Protestantism, 
swinging it away from the true and proper idea thereof, 
lowered it until it almost, if not altogether, ignored 
the priestly function in heaven's ambassadorship, an- 
nointed and appointed to negotiate the treaty of peace 
with men. Instead of accounting, with St. Paul, true 
ambassadors as " ministers of Christ and stewards of 
the mysteries of God," Rome had its priest, and Pur- 
itanism its preacher, with neither one in possession 
of a full conception of all that the ministerial office im- 
plied and included. 

Furthermore, what has been said respectively of 
Romanism and false Protestantism respecting the dis- 
proportionate emphasis laid upon the priestly function 
and the altar on the one hand, and upon the prophetic 
office of the christian ministry and the pulpit in the 
New Testament sanctuary, upon the other, may with 
equal truth be affirmed of these two extremes in Chris- 
tendom with reference to the degree of stiess laid upon 
the sacraments. 

Rome not only increased the number of her sacra- 
ments beyond what had been authorized by our Lord, 
and used by the apostles, and in the early church, but 
also in the course of her degeneracy, ascribed to the 
original two an Opus Operatum power not warranted 
by the divine charter under which they were instituted. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 183 



More account was made of the channels ordained to 
conduct the water of life to the diseased and thirsty 
soul of man than of the Fountain itself, whence pro- 
ceeds the healing, cleansing and refreshing stream of 
human salvation. In her historical drift from the 
true scriptural teaching and primitive practice, Rome 
reached the point in the perversion of the truth and 
in the desecration of holy things, whose transsubstan- 
tiation became the product of a pious trick in the leg- 
erdemain of magic art; and consequently a false as- 
sumption was made the basis of the doctrine that so- 
teriological virtue inhered in the alleged converted ele- 
ments, and that the sacraments themselves operated 
through and from themselves, rather than serving as 
means of grace when used in a proper sacramental trans- 
action for the conduction or bestowment of a spiritual 
blessing upon those who were enabled by the Holy 
Ghost to receive such blessings in the exercise of faith. 

The opposite of the above mentioned trend of per- 
version in the assignment to the sacraments of their 
position in the Romish system, is found in the equally 
erratic and more negative tendency in the false de- 
velopment of Protestantism. That false principle has 
not yet worked itself out to its logical and final con- 
clusion. The closing period of four hundred years 
will not be long enough to measure the full swing of 
the pendulum in the direction of complete rationalistic 
negation of the positive content and pure principles 
that proper Protestantism essentially involves. The 
reaction from Romish presumption and consequent 
senseless formalities has been for centuries and still 
is in the direction of hyper-spiritualism. The records 



184 The Mercersburg Theology. 



of history are testimonials to the truth of the above as- 
sertion. Its way-marks stand out in bold relief, show- 
ing the drift from the perversions of Romanism to the 
abominations of religious spiritualisticism and down- 
right infidelity. This excess of religious riot and spur- 
ious piety is seen coursing its way down the aisle of 
post-Reformation centuries, from Socinianism to the 
Schwenkfelders, from the pietism of Spener to the 
dreamland of Swedenborg, and from the Muggleton- 
ians to the Quakers, who, under the leadership of 
George Fox and his following of Friends, became the 
most consistent of their general class of spiritualists, 
by putting the sacraments entirely out of commission. 



LECTURE X. 



Mercersburg Soteriology — Continued. 

The perversive and subversive forces at war with the 
true and positive principles of Protestantism are not 
found exclusively or chiefly either in the Church of 
Rome or in the hyperspiritual sects. Too generally 
a man's enemies are of his own household. As the 
Roman form of the Catholic Church germinated, fos- 
tered, and perpetuated the seeds of ecclesiastical cor- 
ruptions, so does Protestantism contain in her own 
bosom and in her leading, most historical and influ- 
ential denominations, both the possibility and actu- 
ality of perversive principles. These are the forces 
that spoil the vines, sour the grapes in the garden of 
the Lord's house, and empty the chalice of the holy 
eucharist of its most significant contents. Even de- 
nominations which are strictly orthodox in their sym- 
bols of doctrine and confessions of faith, are often and 
too generally found practically opposed or indifferent 
to much that they profess. Their current literature, 
the messages from their pulpits, and the teachings of 
their theological schools, too generally show either a 
negative attitude or a studied silence toward much of 
the contents of the Gospel. 

The latter is sadly and shamefully true of some so- 
called schools of theology that represent no distinct 
and positive system of theological thought. Like the 

185 



186 The Mercersburg Theology. 



goddess of spurious wisdom, and sham battle conflicts, 
they spring into being as modern mythological Min- 
ervas from the brains of various ambitious and dis- 
appointed Jupiters, and hurl their argumentum ad 
ignorantiams at some innocent and harmless man of 
straw. In the face of scriptural teaching, historical 
facts, and sound exegesis, they deride the priestly 
functions of the christian ministry, declaim against 
the eucharistic altar of the New Testament sanctuary, 
and deny to the proper use of the sacraments anything 
like a sealing virtue. 

Especially is the significance of the sacrament of 
baptism made of little or no account, in "the communi- 
cation of such great grace." In this revised edition 
of the Gospel, men are no longer urged to be "born of 
the water and of the Spirit," as taught by "the Apos- 
tle and High Priest of our profession, Jesus Christ." 
Judging from the general silence of the more popular 
pulpits upon the subject, God no longer saves men "by 
the washing or laver of regeneration." That sacra- 
ment is not now referred to as it was by St. Paul when 
he addressed the christians at Rome: "called to be 
saints," as having been "baptized into Jesus Christ" 
and into his death. The inspired apostle also referred 
in some sense to baptism for the dead. Many of the 
modern Ciceros of the pulpit refer in no positive sense 
to baptism for the living. In the exuberance of their 
religious emotions and excessive eagerness to convert 
the world, half-fledged evangelists shriek in the di- 
rection of some imaginary point outside the compass 
of the Zodiac for another Pentecost and a new baptism 
of the Holy Ghost, while they ignore the truth preach- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 187 



ed on the day of the one great Pentecost, when the 
inspired exhortation was given that every one should 
" repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ 
for the remission of sins," as the divinely given con- 
dition upon which the penitent was to receive the gift 
of the Holy Ghost. Why do hyperspiritual preachers 
contend for apostolic succession, and pride themselves 
in their apostolic commission, while they ignore the 
authority which imperatively commands them not 
only to teach, but also to make disciples of all nations 
by baptizing them in the name of the Father and the 
Son and the Holy Ghost? 

The condition of things, as partially indicated in the 
foregoing paragraphs, is not the growth of a day. It 
is the product of centuries and the accumulation of 
multiplied chronic perversions. Toward the middle 
of the nineteenth century it became the occasion for 
the soteriological feature of the Mercersburg move- 
ment. Then it was that Dr. John W. Nevin's bugle 
blast became the truly Protestant tocsin of a loud alarm. 
Then it was that he wrote his incisive papers on Cy- 
prian and early Christianity, exposed the Anglican 
Church in its exclusive claims to apostolic succession, 
and as the sole perpetuator of the primitive purity of 
christian doctrine and practice. Then it was that he 
bearded the Roman Catholic lions in their dark and 
dismal den. Then it was that he exposed the false 
claims of so-called Bible Christianity, and treated with 
merited ridicule the pretensions of multiplied and mul- 
tiformed sects. Then it was that he sat down upon 
the anxious-bench system of inflated religiousness with 
all the ponderosity of his powerful pen. Then it was 



188 The Mercersburg Theology. 



that he wrote his exhaustive treatise on "The Doctrine 
of the Reformed Church on the Lord's Supper," as 
distinguished from the mass of Romanism on the one 
hand, the consubstantiation of Lutheranism upon the 
other, and the mere memorial theory of religious ra- 
tionalism everywhere else. Then it was that he wrote 
his scholarly analysis and strong defence of the Heidel- 
berg Confession as the most ecumenical and properly 
Protestant standard of faith produced in the six- 
teenth century of the christian era. Then it was that 
he repelled the attack of the Dutch Crusade, and gave 
Dr. Proudfit of New Brunswick and Dr. Berg of Phila- 
delphia a gentle hint that they met in this truly Prot- 
estant champion a foeman worthy of their steel. Then 
it was that Romanist, Rationalist, and Puritan, found 
that they had as their antagonist a man whose posi- 
tion was as impregnable as the Gibraltar of everlast- 
ing truth. And then it was that Dr. John Henry Au- 
gustus Bomberger arose in all the majesty of his im- 
perial power to defend Dr. John Williamson Nevin 
against the assault of his antagonists, and in the sup- 
port of the essential principles of Mercersburg Theology. 

Dr. Augustus Rauch, having passed into his heaven- 
ly inheritance before the polemical period of the Mer- 
cersburg movement had been reached, Dr. Philip 
Schaff became his successor, and Dr. Nevin's main 
support in the trying ordeal through which both of 
them were called to pass in clearing the central issue 
and most material principle in the theological contro- 
versy of that incisive age. Dr. Nevin had also other 
very loyal and able coadjutors in the cause which he 
had espoused, and coworkers in the field which Prov- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 189 



idence was then opening for heroic action by heroic 
christian men. Among these were Drs. Henry Har- 
baugh, Thomas G. Apple, Moses Kieffer, Emanuel V. 
Gerhart, Thomas C. Porter, J. W. Santee, Elnathan 
E. Higbee, George B. Russell, Clement Z. Weiser and 
Samuel N. Callender. The early numbers of the Re- 
view are in evidence that each one of these men treated 
some distinct phase of the general subject while the 
discussion was, already in the middle of the nineteenth 
century, leading on toward the distinctive principles 
of Mercersburg Soteriology. While the various con- 
tributions of their respective pens showed that the 
truth was variously seen from different points of view 
and contended for in great diversity of style, they 
were all in conservative and essential harmony in 
their progressively cooperative efforts to straighten 
without breaking, and remold, without destroying, 
one jot or tittle of fragmentary orthodoxy then in 
vogue throughout the entire realm of an earnest and 
inquiring Christendom. 

In its soteriological province Mercersburg Theology 
laid stress upon the importance of the use of the holy 
sacraments in god's ordinary method of saving men. 
Its contention was that while they were subordinate 
to and dependent upon the written Word, they were 
as really constituent parts of the Gospel as the Word 
by which and according to which they were constituted. 
While the Mercersburg school has no sympathy with 
the opus operatum view and transubstantiation alchemy 
of the sacraments, as held by the Roman Church, it 
does hold and teach that God's promise, made in a 
visible signing and sealing ordinance, is just as bind- 



190 The Mercersburg Theology. 

ing in its claims upon our obedience and just as com- 
forting to the believer's heart as the verbal promise 
recorded in the Bible and proclaimed in the Gospel 
message from the pulpit. The rainbow in water colors 
on the cloud has as much meaning as a written pro- 
position in ink-colors on paper, and the same binding 
sanctity as the word spoken from Jehovah's mouth, 
when he said: "I will establish my covenant with you 
and with your seed after you, neither shall all flesh 
be cut off anymore by the waters of a flood." Indeed 
both the sacraments and the written Y\ovd ground 
themselves in the person and authority of the incar- 
nate Word. Both the virtue of faith and implicit 
obedience rest upon the person of Christ as the only 
foundation of genuine christian hope. It is because 
of their relation to Christ that the written Word and 
the divinely appointed sacraments are viewed as com- 
plemental parts of the Gospel, and inseparably connect- 
ed with each other. If baptism be less important than 
faith in order to salvation, the command to be baptized 
is no less imperative than the command to believe. 
Under one view the act of baptism is greater than the 
act of faith, or the act of the human soul in the exer- 
cise of faith. Baptism is primarily God'- act, while 
faith, howsoever it may be the gift of God and howso- 
ever it may be wrought in (not into) the heart by the 
preaching of the Gospel, is primarily man's act. The 
former is the more objective factor, while the latter 
includes more of the subjective element in the economy 
and process of human salvation. Men may believe, 
but God is the efficient or prime mover in baptism. 
How presumptious, then, is the intimation on the part 



The Mercersburg Theology. 191 



of hyper-evangelisticism that the human part of the 
action in man's salvation is more essential than the 
divine part in the transaction. 

At this point the writer reminds himself that in 
undertaking the composition of this book it was his 
primary purpose neither to defend the truth nor ex- 
toll the beauties of the Mercersburg Theology, but 
rather to search the records, analyze the system, and 
report the results of his investigation with as little 
partiality as possible for one who has been in the habit 
of doing a little fair and fearless thinking upon his 
own responsibility. He will therefore proceed to re- 
call the chief apostles and fairest representatives of 
that school to the witness stand, and permit them to 
testify in open court just what Mercersburg Soteriology 
really does teach as to the part which the divine econ- 
omy assigns to the holy sacraments in the healing of 
the moral disease to which the human flesh is heir, 
under the great catastrophe and consequences of the 
fall, and just what they are designed to accomplish in 
the deliverance of the penitent believer from all his 
sins and miseries. 

Dr. Philip SchafT, though living, moving and having 
his christian being in the very bosom of the sacrament- 
al system of grace and truth, wrote comparatively 
little dogmatically upon the soteriological aspects of 
the sacraments. His special field of investigation and 
didactic activity being primarily that of history, his 
literary contributions, as bearing upon the Mercers- 
burg Theology, have their chief value as showing his 
apprehensions of truth as obtained from its historic 
records. He is, therefore, called to the witness stand 



192 The Mercersburg Theologt. 

to testify as to how baptism was held in the primitive 
age of the christian church. He writes:* "This or- 
dinance was regarded in the ancient church as the 
sacrament of conversion and regeneration, as the sol- 
emn rite of initiation into the christian church, ad- 
mitting to all her benefits and committing to all her 
obligations. Its effect was supposed to consist in the 
forgiveness of sins and the communication of the 
Holy Ghost. " He then proceeds to quote in the same 
connection, from some of the Fathers whose testi- 
mony is hereinafter given: "Justin calls baptism the 
water-bath for the forgiveness of sins and the bath of 
conversion and the knowledge of God." "It is often 
called also illumination, spiritual circumcision, anoint- 
ing, sealing, gift of grace, symbol of redemption, death 
of sin. " He also quotes Tertullian as saying : " When 
the soul comes to faith and becomes transformed 
through regeneration by water and power from above, 
it discovers, after the veil of the old corruption is 
taken away, its whole light. It is received into the 
fellowship of the Holy Ghost ; and the soul which unites 
itself to the Holy Ghost is followed by the body." 
Only general reference is made to Origen who, writing 
about the middle of the third century, in commenting 
upon the Epistle to the Romans, spoke as follows: 
"The Church had from the Apostles a tradition to give 
baptism even to infants. For they to whom the di- 
vine mysteries were committed knew that there is in 
all persons the natural pollution of sin, which must be 
done away with by water and the spirit." Neither 
does he refer particularly to Chrysostom, who wrote 

* History of the Christian Church, p. 395. 



The Mercersburg Theology, 193 



in the fourth century in one of his sermons: "But 
our circumcision, I mean the grace of baptism, gives 
cure without pain, and procures to us a thousand bene- 
fits/' 

Dr. John W. Nevin, writing of the Doctrine of the 
Reformed Church on the Lord's Supper,"* says of 
that sacrament: "The communion is spiritual, not 
material. It is a participation of the Savior's life. 
Of his life, however, as human, subsisting in a true 
bodily form. The living energy, the vivific virtue, 
as Calvin styles it, of Christ's flesh, is made to flow over 
into the communicant, making him more and more 
one with Christ himself, and thus more and more an 
heir of the same immortality that is brought to light 
in his person. * * * "The sacrament is made 
to carry with it an objective force, so far as the prin- 
cipal design is concerned. It is not simply suggestive, 
commemorative or representational. It is not a sign, 
a picture, deriving its significance from the mind of the 
beholder. The virtue which it possesses is not put 
into it by the faith of the worshiper in the first place 
to be taken out of it again by the same faith in the 
same form. It is not imagined of course in the case 
that the ordinance can have any virtue without faith, 
that it can confer grace in a purely mechanical way. 
All thought of the opus operatum, in this sense, is 
utterly repudiated. Still faith does not properly 
clothe the sacrament with its power. It is the con- 
dition of its efficacy for the communicant, but not the 
principle of the power itself. This belongs to the in- 
stitution in its own nature. The signs are bound to 

* Mercersburg Review, 1850, pp. 430, 431, 526, 547, 548. 
13 



194 The Mercersburg Theology 



what they represent, not subjectively simply in the 
thought of the worshiper, but objectively, by the 
force of a divine appointment. The union, indeed, 
is not natural but sacramental. The grace is not com- 
prehended in the elements as its depository and ve- 
hicle outwardly considered, but the union is none the 
less real and firm on this account. The grace goes in- 
separably along with the signs and is truly present for 
all who are prepared to make it their own. The signs 
in this view are also seals; not simply as the attest of 
the truth and realty of the grace in a general way, but 
as they authenticate also its presence under the sac- 
ramental exhibition itself. This is what we mean by 
the objective force of the institution; and this we say 
is one point that must always be kept in view, in look- 
ing at the doctrine that is now the subject of our at- 
tention. The other point to be steadily kept in sight 
is, that the invisible grace of the sacrament is the sub- 
stantial life of the Savior himself, particularly in his 
human nature. He became flesh for the life of the 
world, and our communion with him involves the real 
participation in him as the principle of life under this 
form. Hence in the mystery of the Supper, his flesh 
and blood are really exhibited always in their essential 
force and power, and really received by every worthy 
communicant. Such is the proper sacramental doc- 
trine of the Reformed Church as it stood in the six- 
teenth century." * * * "When we look at the 
Catechism itself, we find its sacramental doctrine to 
be in fact just what might be expected in this view." 
* * * <<Fj ve times over, to say the very least, 
in the 75th, 76th, 77th, 79th and 80th questions, we 



The Mercersburg Theology. 195 



have the idea of a life communion with Christ in the 
holy supper solemnly proclaimed as lying at the ground 
of our communion with his death." * * * " Al- 
together could it be more strongly asserted than it is 
here (in the Catechism) said in fact, that the holy eu- 
charist by the act of Christ objectively through his 
wonder-working spirit, and not simply by our act, we 
are made to participate, not orally and outwardly, 
but mysteriously, dynamically and substantially, 
through the inmost soul-center of our being, in the 
divine life that springs up perpetually through the 
fountain of his humanity, as Calvin has it, for the use 
of our dreary and dying nature." * * * So the 
church felt from the beginning; and this right feeling 
it was that led her to see in the central mysteries of 
her faith the presence of the living Christ always as 
the necessary guarantee and medium of all true com- 
munion with the benefits procured by his death. In 
the Lord's supper especially, the idea of the living 
Savior, the true foundation of life for the world, per- 
petually surrounded and enshrined the idea of the 
Savior who once hung upon the cross." 

Dr. J. H. A. Bomberger: "In baptism the child 
receives, through the promised mercy of God in Jesus 
Christ, immediate release from the penalty of original 
sin, by a formal covenant transaction. * * * The 
second benefit secured is the official removal, from the 
child properly baptized, of the stain or pollution of na- 
tive depravity. By this divine pledge and sign, he 
assures us that we are spiritually cleansed from our 
sins, as really as we are externally washed with water. 
* * * * The third benefit formally secured by 



196 The Mercersburg Theology. 

baptism, is the present renewal of the nature of the 
child, in Christ Jesus, by the Holy Ghost. Its baptism 
is the visible 'sign and seal 5 of its being engrafted 
into Christ. * * * I have noticed with concern 
yet with faith, the operation of the ordinance. And 
my unhesitating testimony is, that as a rule, all the 
baptized children I have ever met with and observed, 
have given evidence of being under gracious influence, 
such influences as proved that the child was not en- 
tirely in a state of corrupt nature." Infant Salvation, 
pp. 177, 178, 179, 180, 182. 

Dr. Moses Kieffer, Professor of Theology in Heidel- 
berg Theological Seminary, alluding to the figures and 
forms of speech made use of by our Lord and St. Paul, 
and under which the relation between the vine and 
the branches, the head and the body, is made the ve- 
hicle for the parabolic conveyance of truth, wrote, 
reasoning aposteriori :* ' 1 These unions are all real, 
so that must be real which they illustrate. Let us 
add to this the evidence derived from the true nature 
of the sacraments. The apostle Paul, having main- 
tained that Christ was mystical, i. e., that Christ and 
believers are one body, illustrates and confirms his 
declaration by an allusion to the sacrament of baptism 
and the Lord's supper: 'For by one spirit are we 
baptized into one body, whether we be Jews, Gentiles, 
whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to 
drink into one spirit, if this union be real, but mere- 
ly relative, then the sacraments are merely signs and 
not seals, exhibiting and applying Christ to the re- 
cipients of his grace. For without this real union the 

* Mercersburg Review, 1856, p. 483. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



197 



feeding on Christ's body and blood truly and really 
in the sacrament is not possible, which is nevertheless 
the doctrine of the scriptures and of our Catechism, 
proven from the very words of the institution." 

Dr. Henry Harbaugh: "It is by the ordinances of 
Christ in his Church that the spirit verifies to us his 
own work. All our acts must be endorsed, and that 
by divine acts. Penitence, prayer, confession, faith, 
and all the experiences under the operations of grace 
are our acts ; and the secan nevermore verify themselves, 
but must be verified by divine acts. These divine acts 
are God's sacraments. They are not what we do to 
Him. but what God does for us, In baptism we are 
subjects, not actors, recipients, not factors, be baptized 
of God, not baptize thyself to Him." "Take, eat" — ■ 
not take, give. In these divine acts, by the church as 
commissioned for that purpose, all that we do is made 
valid and acknowledged before we can be assured that 
it is valid for us. Just as any legal paper, or deed, 
must be signed and acknowledged by the state, though 
rightly drawn, before it is valid. Without such an 
act in which our pardon is certified to us, our hearts 
cannot possess a full and satisfying sense of forgive- 
ness." * * * ''Here comes a poor penitent who 
has been far away, and spent all in the world of sin. 
He thinks, in his misery of the church in which his 
father dwells. He comes back, but full of fear. Guit 
holds him back and fear alarms. The father sees 
him. advances toward him with promises and show of 
mercy. But still the sinner trembles, and fars the 
wrath which his sins have most justly provokd. »a 
cannot believe and confide even though he sees smile 



198 The Mercersburg Theology. 



where he expected to see frowns; he stands still, even 
though he sees outstretched arms where he expected 
to see uplifted hands of warning and wrath. He 
answers every invitation and promise with the words: 
Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy 
sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But 
he hears the Father speak to his servants: Take the 
poor polluted but penitent wanderer in sin, wash him 
in the water of baptism, and thus put my name on 
him, and bring him into my house. Give him a place 
among my saints. Make room for him at my table, 
and let him eat of the body of my beloved Son, and 
tell him it was broken for him. Give him the cup, 
and tell him it is the New Testament in his blood 
which was shed for him for the remission of sins. 
Say this to him as from Me: Thy sins, which were 
many, are all forgiven thee. Then there is joy in the 
house. Then there is joy among the angels. Then 
there is joy in the penitent's own heart. He hears the 
Father now say: My son was dead, and is alive again. 
He was lost and is found. He doubts no more, but 
in the full assurance of hope, begins: I believe in the 
Holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints; the 
forgiveness of sins."* 

Dr. Thomas G. Applet "May we not, then, say 
that we are ingrafted, or incorporated into Chiist by 
christian baptism? To be in Christ, is to be introduced 
into this relation by baptism. The act, as our natural 
birth, in which we are constituted members of fallen 
humanity, is an act in which we are not active, but 

* Mercersburg Review, 1868, pp. 30, 31, 32. 
t Mercersburg Review, 1867, pp. 92, 93. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



199 



passive. We submit to it in faith, it is true, though 
in the case of the child, there can be no active submis- 
sion even; but still it is God's act towards us, whereby 
we are taken out of the old Adamic nature, held under 
the power of the devil, and inserted into redeemed hu- 
manity in Christ. We are not unaware that in the 
Heidelberg Catechism, it is incidentally said that we 
are ingrafted into Christ by a true faith. (Question 
20. Are all men then saved by Christ as they have 
perished by Adam? No; only such as, by a true faith, 
are ingrafted into him, and receive all his benefits.) 
It must be borne in mind, however, that this instruc- 
tion is given to one already baptized, concerning which 
baptism the catechism teaches, that it is the means of 
incorporation into the church of Christ. Faith here, 
evidently, is to be regarded as the condition, not the 
means, of ingrafting into Christ. For how can faith, 
which is a human act, perform that which is an act 
of God to us? We may say, therefore, that it is not 
by repentance, not by faith, not by prayer, not by any- 
thing we do, that this relation is brought about. It 
is an act of God, performed in our behalf, which is 
deeper than all experience, nay, is the ground and 
source of all christian experience, because it is an act by 
which the center of our life is poised in Christ, as the 
head of a new race. Faith is necessary as a condition; 
for baptism cannot be properly administered where it is 
resisted in unbelief. The child stands in the warm 
bosom of the faith of the church which, through its 
parents or sponsors, is pledged in its behalf. To ex- 
clude the child from the reception of this great grace, 
because it has not conscious faith, is to say that sin 



200 The Mercersburg Theology. 

can abound where grace cannot abound, in opposition 
to the assertion of the Apostle, that where sin abounds, 
grace does much more abound.'' 

" Neither can we say that the Word is the specific 
means of grace, whereby men are engrafted into Christ. 
The word as preached to the unbaptized by the apos- 
tles, was a call to Christ. This was its object, to turn 
the attention of men to him as the true Messiah, the 
Son of God, the Savior of the world. When they were 
ready to receive him, they were baptized into him, and 
thus made members of him. In the church, the Word 
is continually used to instruct those who are baptized, 
according to the great commission, and thus train 
them up in the knowledge of the glorious grace signed 
and sealed to them in baptism. The Word is always to 
them in the Lord." 

"Christian baptism, then, we think the Scriptures 
teach, is the sacrament of our incorporation into Christ. 
In this sacrament, as in the Lord's supper also, we are 
confronted with Christianity, as an objective reality. 
The powers of the heavenly world are in them brought 
nigh to the inhabitants of the earth. This is the sac- 
rament which confronts those who would enter into 
the kingdom of divine grace. Though visible only as 
water, it has enshrined in it the invisible grace which 
must cleanse us, when we enter the congregation of the 
people of the Lord. It is important that we should 
believe in its sacred mystery. Strip it of its meaning 
as is done in much of the unsacramental and anti- 
sacramental religion of the day, and it becomes a mere 
empty form and idle ceremony, and passes out of use 
as a superstitution of the past." 



The Mercersburg Theology. 201 



Dr. Emanuel V. Gerhart :* "A sacrament is a sign 
and seal of divine grace. The outward element is 
both the sign and the seal. As a sign it represents 
grace, a spiritual good. As a seal it gives the assurance 
of a real and present grace. The thing signified is 
bound objectively to the sign. The outward element 
becomes a seal in being a true sign. Did the outward 
element exist by itself; were the union of the thing 
signified with the sign not necessary and real, but arb- 
itrary and possible only, then the outward element 
would be in no sense a seal ; it would not signify some- 
thing present and real, but something that might or 
might not be present, according to circumstances. But 
in not signifying a reality, the outward element would 
lose its character also as a sign; it would simply be 
itself — water, or bread and wine ; as for anything spiri- 
tual, in real connection with the sign it would be un- 
meaning and untrustworthy. A sign which does not 
represent any unseen reality to be in certain connec- 
tion with it, is properly no sign at all. Thus if we di- 
vest the outward element in a sacrament of the char- 
acter of a seal, it ceases also to possess the character 
of a sign. The two conceptions demand each other 
reciprocally." 

" What a sacrament is as an institution of Christ 
it is also in its use by those who worthily observe it; 
that is, the sacramental transaction signifies and seals 
divine grace to a proper subject of the sacrament. 
The impartation of the outward element signifies the 
impartation of an inward grace. Under this view it 
is a sign. But the sacramental transaction is not an 

* Mercersburg Review, 1858, pp. 9, 10. 



202 The Mercersburg Theology. 



illusion of the senses. It is a real transaction. The 
infant (and the penitent adult also) is really wash- 
ed with water, and the believer really ea's bread and 
diinks wine at the table of the Lord. As a true sign, 
therefore, the application of the outward element rep- 
resents a real communication of divine grace. As 
such it is a seal. The sacramental transaction assures 
the recipient that he participates in the inward grace 
as really as he participates in the outward element. 
It conveys and confirms what it signifies. The two, 
the sign and the thing signified, are united in the trans- 
action as truly as in the institution. The sign completes 
itself in the seal. Were the present communication 
of the inward, to those for whom it is designed, not as 
real as the present communication of the outward, 
the transaction would be without any corresponding 
meaning. It would represent what does not take place. 
The outward would be certainly communicated, but 
the inward might as certainly be withheld. The out- 
ward would, in consequence, not be a true, but a false 
or empty sign. If, therefore the administration of a 
sacrament be not a sealing transaction, if it do not 
make over and convey what it signifies, and the one 
as really as the other, it is not, strictly speaking, a sign. 
It is an outward ceremony, and no more, a ceremony 
of an unmeaning or delusive character. " 

In the Order of Worship, which was among the first 
fruits of Mercersburg Theology as applied to christian 
cultus, we have a full recognition of the sacramental 
system of truth and grace so earnestly advocated by 
the Mercersburg apostles. In the liturgical formulas 
for Baptism and the Lord's Supper, Mercersburg so- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



203 



teriology is manifest. On page 188 it is taught that 
"Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ instituted the holy 
sacrament of baptism unto the remission of sins." 
On page 190 the parents or vouchers, standing before 
the altar, are reminded that they present the infant sub- 
ject for the sacrament and "seek for him deliverance 
from the power of the Devil, the remission of sin, and 
the gift of a new and spiritual life by the Holy Ghost, 
through the Sacrament of Baptism, which Christ hath 
ordained for the communication of such great grace." 
On page 201, the thanksgiving prayer recognizes the 
benefit received: "We yield Thee heartily thanks, most 
merciful Father, that it hath pleased Thee, through the 
mystery of thy holy Baptism, to deliver this person 
from the power of darkness, and to translate him into 
the Kingdom of Thy dear Son." On page 165 the 
communicant at the Lord's table is reminded that 
"We have to do here, not with the outward signs only, 
but with the heavenly realities themselves which these 
signs represent." In the consecratory prayer, page 180, 
the petition is: " Almighty God, our heavenly Father, 
send down, we beseech Thee, the powerful benedic- 
tion of Thy Holy Spirit upon these elements of bread 
and wine, that being set apart now from a common to 
a sacred and mystical use, they may exhibit and rep- 
resent to us with true effect the Body and Blood of 
Thy Son, Jesus Christ; so that in the use of them we 
may be made, through the power of the Holy Ghost, 
to partake really and truly of His blessed life." So 
also in the eucharistic or thanksgiving prayer, page 
184: "Almighty and everlasting God, we give Thee 
most hearty thanks for the great goodness Thou hast 



204 The Mercersburg Theology. 



shown toward us at this time, in vouchsafing to feed 
us, through these holy mysteries with the spiritual 
food of the most precious body and blood of Thy Son 
our Savior, Jesus Christ; assuring us thereby that we 
are very members incorporate in the mystical body of 
Thy Son, and heirs through hope of thine everlasting 
kingdom, by the merits of his most blessed death and 
passion." 

Dr. E. E. Higbee, alluding to the criticisms evoked 
by the aforementioned Order of Worship, wrote:* " We 
have the clear testimony of the second century, from 
those writers most thoroughly acquainted with her 
life and progress, a testimony upholding with full ac- 
cord and with unhesitating conviction that idea of 
sacramental grace for the acknowledgment of which 
the Order of Worship of the German Reformed Church 
is now sought to be convicted of heresy. From the 
feet of the Apostles, these martyrs of the second cen- 
tury, part of that noble army which praises God, seem to 
know no other theory. Indeed, it is so universally 
recognized, so uniformly assumed as fundamental to 
the very idea of the church and Christianity, that their 
writings fail to be intelligible in the atmosphere or 
light of any other system. This of itself should be 
enough to challenge the prayerful consideration of 
those who find their whole order of thought and faith 
in the element of another and contrary system. If 
Puritanism is unwilling to open its eyes to such a his- 
toric reality, waving away as of but little account to 
itself the faith of the second century in this respect, 
it may expect the same irreverence to be paid to its 

* Mercersburg Review, 1868, pp. 20, 21. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 205 

own tradition and history. With assurance it appeals 
to the canon of Scripture, but with equal assurance 
also did the martyrs of the second century appeal to 
the apostles whose very voice was still echoing in their 
ears. The force of such early historical testimony may 
be thought to be set aside with the pet theory that 
already the whole church was hastening into the apos- 
tasy of Roman Catholicism, and that this whole sac- 
ramental theory is itself the clear evidence of the testi- 
mony of such a complete revolution. But why per- 
chance may not the force of Puritan tradition be 
thought to be set aside by the theory that it is hasten- 
ing into the apostasy of rationalism, in which the 
whole mystery of the supernatural is no longer a 
reality for faith? Why must Puritanism of the nine- 
teenth century be more secure from departure from 
apostolic tradition, than the whole church of the 
second century in which were many who saw the 
forms and heard the burning eloquence of the Apos- 
tles themselves, and with which the fresh fragrance 
of St. John's old age still lingered like the breath of 
love?" 



LECTURE XI. 



Mercersburg Soteriology — Concluded. 

The last lecture contained a large array of concurrent 
views respecting the Holy Sacraments as remedial 
agencies in healing the wounds which sin had inflicted 
upon the human family. Such uniformity of views, 
notwithstanding the variety in phraseology employed 
in giving them expression, is evidence that they were 
all inspired by the same dynamic germ-principle of 
cardinal truth. They grounded their major proposi- 
tions in one and the same supernatural verity, God 
manifest in the flesh. While those writers all reasoned 
more or less by analogy they, nevertheless, drew their 
authority from the sayings of Christ and the examples 
of the apostles, while they still further fortified their 
positions by citing the practices of the primitive church. 
They did not attempt to prove something new under 
the sun or establish a radical innovation in Christen- 
dom, but rather contended for what had always been 
beyond controversy in the Holy Catholic Church until 
the Reformation gave rise to the unwarranted occasion 
for a departure from the faith by the rise of rational- 
ism in Protestant Christendom, and in the consequent 
placing of undue stress upon the subjective and ex- 
perimental as over against the objective and sacra- 
mental in Christianity. Hence these Mercersburg 
teachers and writers, while calm and consistent in 



206 



The Mercersburg Theology. 207 



their claim that the sacred scriptures were above chris- 
tian tradition as authorities in the case, made their 
appeal to the Word of God which liveth and abideth 
forever. 

The passages of scripture relied upon in part by the 
primitive church fathers and the apostles of Mercers- 
burg Soteriology, for the justification of their views 
of the sacrament of baptism, are as follows: "He that 
belie veth and is baptized shall be saved." Mark xvi: 
10. " Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son and of the Holy Ghost. " Math, xxviii: 19. "Re- 
pent ye and be baptized every one of you in the name 
of Jesus Christ unto the remission of sins and ye shall 
receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. " Acts ii: 28. "Ex- 
cept a man be born of water and of the Spirit he can- 
not enter into the Kingdom of God." John iii: 5. 
"Can any man forbid water that these should not be 
baptized which have received the Holy Ghost as well 
as we?" Acts, x: 47. "And as they went on their 
way they came to a certain water, and the eunuch said 
behold here is water, what doth hinder me from being 
baptized?" Acts viii: 36. "Let us draw near with 
a true heart in the fulness of faith, having our hearts 
sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies wash- 
ed with pure water." Heb. x: 22. "And now why 
tarriest thou? Arise and be baptized and wash away 
thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord." Acts 
xxii: 16. "The like figure whereunto even baptism 
doth also now save us by the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ." 1 Peter iii: 21. "But according to his 
mercy he saves us, through the washing of regenera- 



208 The Mercersburg Theology. 



tion, and renewing of the Holy Ghost." Titus iii. 5. 
"Are ye ignorant that all we who are baptized into 
Jesus Christ were baptized into his death; we were 
buried, therefore, with hirn through baptism into 
death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead 
through the glory of the Father, so we also might 
walk in newness of life." Rom. vi: 3, 4. "Ye are all 
children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as 
many of you as have been baptized into Christ have 
put on Christ," Gal. iii: 26, 27. 

Dr. Calvin S. Gerhard, building upon the authority 
of the holy scriptures and following the line of the his- 
torical argument upon the testimony of Cyprian, Au- 
gustine and others, sa} T s* " These quotations from 
the primitive Fathers are given as specimens of the 
faith which prevailed universally in those early days. 
In subsequent ages the doctrine was differently stated, 
but less than these quotations contain was never be- 
lieved, before the Reformation. Since the Reformation, 
however, the work of evisceration has been going for- 
ward until today, perhaps the majority of Protestants 
see no meaning in baptism, except as an ordinance ap- 
pointed by our Lord, and therefore not to be omitted, 
although it is regarded only as a sign, or at most, as a 
seal, but not as a means of grace." * * * But 
the word and the sacraments are both employed by 
our Lord to produce regeneration. Each is a means 
of grace, and each according to its own nature conveys 
grace to the believer. The office of both is to bring 
the individual as a person into living union with the 
Lord Jesus Christ as a person, and to keep him in such 

* Mercersburg Review, pp. 81, 83, 86, 90, 96. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 209 



union with his Lord. * * * Ordinarily, as in the 
case of infants, the sacrament of baptism comes first. 
With adults the word takes the precedence. That is 
to say, the truth of the Gospel addressing itself through 
the Holy Ghost, to the mind and heart, works in their 
case as a regenerating power before baptism is admin- 
istered. But only after the individual is incorporated 
with the church through the sacraments, is the gracious 
covenant relation consummated, by means of which 
regeneration is fully brought to pass." * * * 
"Through the sacrament the individual enters into 
covenant with God and thus obtains a sure anchor for 
the faith, which the Holy Ghost works in his heart." 

* * * * "These points in conclusion: First; 
To identify regeneration with baptism, is to fall into 
the error of the Jews, who claimed to be the children 
of God, because they were the circumcised descendants 
of Abraham." * * * "Second: To claim to be 
regenerated without baptism is to be wise above what 
is written, and to undervalue the church as a divine 
institution, ordained of God for man's salvation. 

* * * Third: During the Middle Ages the sacra- 
mental in religion was for centuries emphasized 
and developed until it had been carried to its utmost 
extreme. Great historic movements are of slow 
growth and far-reaching in their consequences. 
When the reaction comes, it cannot expend itself un- 
til after it has reached the opposite extreme. So with 
the Bible and the experimental in religion. A reac- 
tion has set in in their favor, so that now they are em- 
phasized, while the sacraments are undervalued and 
ignored. In this way we account for the popularity 

14 



210 The Mercersburg Theology. 



of unchurchly doctrines, and the rapid progress of 
low-church congregations. The solution of the prob- 
lem lies not in depreciating the Word of God and ex- 
perimental religion, but in properly recognizing the 
importance of the church and the sacraments on the 
one hand, and the Word of God and experimental re- 
ligion on the other." 

Dr. George B. Russell wrote:* "The proper preach- 
ing of the Gospel, and the right administration of the 
sacraments, are the means of grace in the Reformed 
Church. These are lodged in the very constitution 
of the church itself, and there is real efficacy in these 
means for reaching the end unto which God has ap- 
pointed them; that is, we believe, there is in them 
enough power of divine grace if rightly used, to save 
souls. Heretics and fanatics may charge us with trust- 
ing too much here; and if they wish, may look for other 
helps and use their machinery to bring themselves and 
others into the enjoyment of 'all the benefits of Christ. ' 
* * * But why should it be thought strange 
in us of the old Reformed Church that we rest as our 
fathers did, and as the saints and martyrs did, on the 
wisdom and efficacy of God's plan of obtaining saving 
grace? Abraham believed God and it was accounted 
unto him for righteousness. So we trust God, to give 
us, in his own way, the full salvation that is in his Son 
Jesus Christ. In the faithful preaching of the Gospel 
we hear the truth ; by the Holy Ghost we obey the Gos- 
pel, repent, believe, receive the signs and seals of the 
confirming sacraments, by being baptized, and in par- 
taking of the holy supper." 

* Creed and Customs, pp. 160, 161. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 211 



Rev. Walter E. Krebs, D. D., says:* "Thus it can 
be readily perceived that the great object to be accomp- 
lished by the means of grace is the formation and con- 
tinuation of a mysterious life-union, imperceptible to 
the senses, between Christ the head and individuals 
who are to be members. The question now is, by 
which of these means, specifically, does God design 
to effect this wondrous work: by the Word or by the 
sacraments? Not by the Word, that is, as we have 
defined it, the preaching of the Gospel; and for this 
plain reason. Preaching is directed to the mind or 
intellect with the view of moving both the affections 
and the will. But the moving of the affections and 
of the will is not reaching the life-center of the being; 
the intellect or mind is not the 1 i £ *- of man. All the 
thinking, feeling, or willing that one can do, though as- 
sisted in these acts by divine power, cannot of them- 
selves make him a new creature in Christ Jesus. This 
inward, radical, divine work must be accomplished, 
therefore, by the only other means the sacraments. The 
correspondence or connection between the fundamental 
work to be done, and the means by which it is done, is 
truly great, and can easily be seen. Baptism is the 
ordinance of this mysterious union. For it may be 
asked, if the union formed by the implantation of the 
life of Christ, expressed by the formula, "Ye in Me," 
is a mysterious one, imperceptible to the senses, how 
can we know and be assured of its existence? And 
further, if it is brought to pass by the power of God, 
and that too, as no doubt, at some particular place or 
time, does this power operate at any place or time, or 

* Mercersburg Review, 1867, pp. 370, 371, 372. 



212 The Mercersburg Theology. 



is it bound ordinarily to some particular divine or- 
dinance? The water of holy baptism is a sign of the 
cleansing activity of the Holy Ghost, which can con- 
sist only in the inward and real application of the pure 
and perfect life of our Lord Jesus Christ. The water 
of baptism is also a seal that the thing signified, mys- 
teriously and divinely, takes place then and there. 
The very fact of a sign being given proves that a sign 
was needed. But no tangible element or substance 
would be needed as a sign and seal, if by faith or feel- 
ing, or in any other way, a man were certain of a fact. 
Now, as in no other ordinance than baptism, is water, 
which, undoubtedly, can only signify washing, ever 
used; and as washing in a religious sense can consist 
only in expelling or overcoming the filth of sin by the 
introduction of a new life, pure and powerful, there- 
fore, it follows that holy baptism is the means of grace 
whereby the Holy Spirit ingrafts for the first time, in 
any substantial sense, the believer in Christ, and thus 
brings him into a state of salvation. This is the sole 
design and benefit of this sacrament, and there is no 
room for a second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth ad- 
vantage to be hunted up in the popular mode as de- 
rived therefrom. If more than six reasons are given 
why we should submit to baptism, the seventh is most 
certain to be: " Because the Lord requires it. " A very 
good reason indeed, but the very fact that he absolutely 
requires it, and takes for granted that no one coming 
to him would ever think of neglecting and despising 
it, shows that there is some invisible grace connected 
with it that can in no way be dispensed with. God 
can, if he will, bestow this grace without the use of 



The Mercersburg Theology. 213 



the water of baptism, and not the want, but the con- 
tempt of the sacraments condemns, nevertheless it 
must not be forgotten that the grace which is the in- 
visible part of baptism is absolutely necessary in all 
cases, and that we are bound to its divinely appointed 
means, unless exempted by an especial act of divine 
revelation. With these views before us in reference 
to the one sacrament, it will not be necessary for us to 
dwell long on the discussion of the other. As baptism 
has reference to the introduction of life and consequent 
formation of a life-union, so the Lord's supper has ref- 
erence to its maintenance and growth. The process 
of reasoning that led us to see the necessity of an im- 
plantation of real life, would lead us to see the necessity 
also, of nourishing and developing the same. The 
latter can be brought about only by the same divine 
hand that brought about the former. The one, also, 
is a work as mysterious and imperceptible to the senses 
as the other. There is, therefore, as great a necessity, 
for some tangible and visible sign. Bread and wine, 
fit emblems of nourishment and strength, are the di- 
vinely chosen signs of the body and blood of Christ, 
and in the sacrament of his Supper do they become 
seals to the believing recipients of a real participation 
in his divine human life." 

Rev. Samuel H. Giesy, D.D., in his very incisive 
paper on Organic Redemption, says:* " Ordination 
means something, and does something for the man thus 
set apart to this holy work. And so the acts of the 
ministry. They are sacramental (divine) acts: God's 
dealings with man. They carry with them the power, 

* Mercersburg Review, 1871, pp. 520, 521, 522. 



214 The Mercersburg Theology. 



as they are wrought by the authority of Christ. They 
are as though he was the direct personal actor. Hence 
baptism is a supernatural act, taking hold on the un- 
seen world. It is a spiritual reality; not an empty 
form; not a gnostic fiction; not a painted ship on paint- 
ed water; but a soul washed and sanctified with the 
Holy Ghost, and " received into the ark of Christ's 
ehurch, that being steadfast in faith, joyful in hope, 
and rooted in charity, may so pass the waves of this 
troublesome world, as finally to come to the land of 
everlasting life."* As a sacramental (divine) act, it 
does actually all it contemplates': seals, or conveys, 
as well as signifies the grace of Christ. It is the actual 
not merely symbolical, ingrafting or incorporation of 
the child of nature into Christ; his new birth, the in- 
itial point of conjunction with the second Adam, the 
head of the new humanity. Thus Christ, by the power 
of the Holy Ghost, is born in us. as previously he had 
been by the same supernatural power, in the womb of 
the Virgin Mary (St. Luke i: 35); the church serving 
perpetually the office of the virgin mother, according 
to St. Paul's idea, "the mother of us all," (Gal. iv: 
26), and the Psalmist's antecedent one in reference 
even to ancient Zion (Ps. lxxvii: 5), "It shall be said, 
this and that man was born in her. " 

"And so the office of the Holy Communion. It is 
the self-communicating act of Christ. He gives him- 
self in it, his glorified corporeity. So he tells us. The 
bread is his body; the cup is his blood. To deny this 

* Translated by Luther in 1823 from an ancient Latin form, 
and from his "Baptismal Book" transferred to the English 
Prayer Book of 1549. 



The Mercersbtjrg Theology. 215 



is to empty this sacrament of all living gracious sig- 
nificance. The Lord's own words, without gloss or 
comment, ought certainly to be sufficient here. In 
his anticipatory exposition of the eucharist, this clear 
declaration as to its being a means of union between 
the believer and himself occurs: "He that eateth 
my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and 
I in him." (St. John vi: 56). St. Paul alike explic- 
itly affirms it to be the actual communication of Christ 
himself; and this, not in a figure, but in his deepest 
susbtance. The interrogative form in which it is put, 
is only the fullest and strongest affirmation of the truth : 
"The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the com- 
munion, that is the communication of the blood of 
Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the com- 
munion of the body of Christ? 1 Cor. x: 16." 

"The Divine Presence in the eucharist depends not 
upon the communicant's state of mind. It is an in- 
dependent fact. Not by human thought, or memory, 
or will or faith or any mere mental exercise, is Christ 
put into the eucharistical transaction. He is there 
by the sacramental (divine) act of consecration, through 
the Spirit. " (Had he not better have said that Christ 
is there through the spirit, and by the divine act of 
consecration gives sacramental character to the sup- 
per? The Author). 

Faith is only the soul's eyesight by which his pres- 
ence is realized, and the full benefits of his grace, ac- 
tually at hand, individually secured. Not the divine 
presence, but only the actual benefit of the holy com- 
munion is mediated by faith. "The benefit is great, 
if with a true penitent heart and lively faith we re- 



216 The Mercersbtjrg Theology. 



ceive that holy sacrament; for then we spiritually eat 
the flesh of Christ and drink his blood ; then we dwell 
in Christ, and Christ in us. The union thus spoken 
of in such solemn tones is not a mental conformity of 
opinion, sympathy, and will, although these necessar- 
ily result from it, but it is a real and actual incorpora- 
tion of the spiritual portion of man's nature with the 
sacramental body and blood of Christ, and hence with 
Christ himself. Such an act of incorporation is in- 
itiated in holy baptism, by which the foundation of 
spiritual life is laid, and it is ever renewed, strengthen- 
ed and perfected in the holy communion by which the 
superstructure of spiritual life is built up in the soul."* 
Rev. William Rupp, D.D., writing upon "The In- 
fluence of the Christological Principle," says:f "The 
grace of God is by no means a mere passive feeling or 
disposition in God's mind. The sinner is not saved 
simply in consequence of something that passes in the 
mind of God, some immanent purpose or resolve, or 
in consequence of something that passes between the 
persons of the Godhead, some covenant or contract 
between the Father and the Son; as if he were admitted 
into the realms of the blest and made happy merely 
by the imputation to him of a righteousness not his 
own; but he is saved in consequence of something that 
takes place in his own soul The love or grace of God 
in Christ is not merely an immanent activity in the 
mind of God, but a transitive activity that passes over 

* The last three sentences are quoted from the Annotated 
Book of Common Prayer, edited by Rev. Henry Blunt, 1896, 
p. 157. 

t Reformed Quarterly Review, 1891, pp. 69, 74, 75. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 217 



from the heart of God into the heart of the sinners, 
though not, of course, by crossing over any intervening 
space — and there becomes a regenerative, recreative 
power." * * * "In the Word and sacraments 
Christ is spiritually present to the soul as the author 
of salvation, in the former, offering, and in the latter, 
sealing and communicating his renewing and sancti- 
fying grace to the believer. The sacraments are not 
channels for the conveyance of something called grace 
from an absent Christ, but signs of Christ present in 
the church and standing in an immediate relation of 
creative love to the souls of the faithful. And they 
are efficacious signs, that is, signs producing the effect 
which they signify; or they are seals, pledging the re- 
ality and presence of the grace which they represent, 
and rousing and confirming the faith of the recipient, 
whereby he acepts and appropriates the grace that is 
signified and offered. As visible symbols attached to 
the promises of the Gospel, without which they have 
neither meaning nor force, they are aids and supports 
to faith. This is in agreement with the old observa- 
tion that, while God does not need sacraments for the 
bestowment of his grace, man needs them for the re- 
ception and appropriation of it. The grace is not a 
physical, but a moral good, and can therefore not be 
infused into the soul by a physical operation; it can 
only be renewed by a moral process, a process involving 
the intelligence and will of the receiving subject; and 
to initiate and sustain this process is the design of the 
sacraments. This does not imply, however, that their 
efficacy is merely subjective, or in other words, that 
the faith of the subject gets out of them only what the 



218 The Mercersburg Theology. 

imagination has first deposited therein. There is in 
them, as instrumental signs and organs by which 
Christ makes his presence and power felt in the church, 
an objective efficacy and force; but this force is moral 
in its nature and can produce its proper effects only 
when met by a corresponding moral condition in the 
soul. It follows, then, that while the sacraments are 
true and efficacious signs of divine grace, in the sense 
that the grace signified, that is, some particular en- 
ergy of divine love, is always present, they do not ac- 
complish their effects ex opere operato, that is, in 
consequence of the mere performance of the physical 
ceremony, like some magic rites or charms; for these 
effects alway depend upon the faith or freedom of the 
recipient. Where there is no faith in the recipient, 
there the grace of God is exhibited too, in word and 
sacraments, but it does not accomplish its proper re- 
sults/' 

It has frequently been intimated by some who have 
only a superficial smattering of Mercersburg Theology 
and an inadequate acquaintance with the positions 
occupied and principles advocated by its leading apos- 
tles, that some of them latterly abandoned their for- 
mer views. If so, we do not feel ourself called upon 
to become their apologist. Especially has Dr. Rupp 
been made the recipient of such posthumous compli- 
ments. Let us give a passing glance at this matter. 
What were and are the leading characteristics of the 
teachings of this distinctive school? They were and 
ever shall be the christological idea, the theory of de- 
velopment, and an organic view of the church as in- 
volving in her very constitution the sacramental sys- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 219 



tern of salvation. It was because Dr. Rupp had a full 
and clear conception of the true idea of historical devel- 
opment, subjectively and objectively, that he himself 
developed to an extent that cannot in truth be said of 
all other disciples and apostles in that distinctive school 
of incisive thought. He developed in such manner as 
to place a growing stress upon the christological with- 
out any abandonment of his former ecclesiological 
views. He was the most logically progressive of all 
the apostles of Mercersburg teachings. While he ad- 
vanced beyond the positions of that school, as they 
were more narrowly occupied and defended in the 
earlier stages of Mercersburg history, he never broke 
with the past, but logically unfolded the germinal 
principles he so consistently held from the beginning, 
always advancing to a keener sense of new necessities 
as he saw them arise along the path of progress in 
which his discerning eye saw our incarnate God so 
victoriously marching on. This logical advancement 
enabled him to give the Christ of history a greater pre- 
eminence in the church, as he placed the christologi- 
cal idea more to the forefront than the position it had 
relatively occupied in the earlier years when the ec- 
clesiological question was the battle-cry of the giants 
in the wars of the Lord. Hence he carried his chris- 
tology into every branch of christian science. He so 
made it the touch-stone of the doctrine of the atone- 
ment as to rattle the dry bones of the Anselmic and 
other merely substitutionary theories entirely out of 
their mechanical and untenable systems. He applied 
it to all arbitrary apprehensions of predestination in 
such a way as to reorganize all the truths of those doc- 



220 The Mercersburg Theology. 

trines into a new organic conception of the subject. 
He carried it forward in his truly rational conception 
of the relation between divine revelation and human 
discovery of the truth until he reached the conclusion 
that the general christian consciousness is to be classed 
among the evidences of the reality of divine and super- 
natural things. He poured its healing rays into the 
barren abstractions of religion, and animated the mani- 
kins of Christless theology until the skeletons began 
to articulate their osseous parts with flesh upon the 
bones, arteries in the flesh, blood in the arteries, life 
in the blood, and power in the life, even the life and 
power and glory of Mary's first-born son, the Eternal 
Son of God. And as he looked abroad upon the world 
as alienated from God, and at war with itself, he has- 
tened to carry his christological balm into the fields 
of sociology for the healing of the nations. 



LECTURE XII. 



The Mercersburg Conception of Christian 

CULTUS. 

In the last three lectures, under the general heading 
of Mercersburg Soteriology, it was made to appear 
from its literary records that that school of theological 
thought held very pronounced views of God's method 
of saving man from the effects of the great catastrophe. 
It was shown that its distinctive apprehension of the 
great salvation by which the world is to be delivered 
from the bondage of corruption was not only drawn 
from the teachings of the Holy Scriptures, but that 
it was also made a correlated logical necessity by its 
view of sin as a disturbing and destructive element pre- 
sent in the organism of fallen humanity. The ex- 
ceeding sinfulness of this moral malady is regarded as 
consisting not entirely in the fact of its being a trans- 
gression of God's law, but also and rather as holding 
in the additional fact that sin, as a perversion of the 
possibility of the good, is a moral disease, which through 
the instigation of the devil and the actualized possi- 
bility of human disobedience, has fastened its fangs 
like a deadly viper in the constitution of the human 
race ; that such hamartialogy drew after it, in the way 
of rational consistency, a corresponding soteriology; 
that the grace which brought salvation is not merely 
some benevolent emotion or disposition of the eternal 

221 



222 The Mercersburg Theology. 

mind, to be drawn out by human repentance and faith, 
but rather the transfusion of innocent blood into the 
arteries of the fallen finite race, and the consequent 
impartation of redeeming life-force into the veritable 
center and substance of man's being; that this is done 
as something made possible by the incarnation; that 
its initial work is Christ formed in the penitent in- 
dividual as the germ-principle of his salvation and the 
hope of his ultimate glory ; that the Holy Ghost, the 
giver of life, meditates this life in Christ's body, the 
church, through the faithful preaching and obedient 
hearing of the Gospel, and supplements the same by 
the proper use of the sacraments; that the sacraments 
while distinct, are, nevertheless, inseparable from and 
complemental to the power and promise of the Gos- 
pel; that these holy ordinances work neither as by 
moral magic for the accomplishment of their gracious 
effects, nor ex opere operato as though their mission 
were to be accomplished through an outward ceremony, 
but always as conditioned by the recipiency of those 
who really became partakers of the benefits designed 
by their appointment and use; that when such re- 
ceptibility and power of appropriation are present in 
the individual and his gracious environments, the sac- 
raments serve, as they are designed, for "the commun- 
ication of such great grace;" that this mysterious sys- 
tem of sacramental energies grounds itself in the sac- 
rificial, even as the latter derives its virtue from the vol- 
untary propitiatory act of Immanuel, whose person is 
the source of our salvation; that, in accordance with 
the above logical and scriptural order of divine myster- 
ies, "as many as were baptized into Jesus Christ were 



The Mercersburg Theology. 223 



baptized into his death," Rom. vi: 4, giving ground 
through such mystical union to the communion which 
justifies in truth the scriptural teaching, that "as often 
as ye eat of the sacramental bread and drink of the 
sacramental cup ye do show the Lord's death until he 
come/' Cor. xi: 26; that the Mercersburg school of 
theological teaching attaches significance to the mem- 
orial side of the supper only as the eucharistic sacrifice 
of the individual and collective body of the communi- 
cants are " offered in union with the blessed and meri- 
torious sacrifice of Christ; and this, again, only as the 
communicants offer themselves upon the altar of the 
Gospel, in soul and body, property and life to God's 
most blessed service and praise." (Order of Worship, 
p. 181.) 

The recapitulation made in the last paragraph, and 
culminating in its closing sentence, brings us logically 
to the subject now about to pass under our considera- 
tion, the subject of Christian Cultus. How natural 
the transition! How orderly the advance! Mercers- 
burg Theology does not use the term cultus as signi- 
fying something sharply different from the strictly 
supernatural and distinctly sacramental element in the 
economy of salvation. The transition is rather from 
the more objective to the more subjective side of one 
organic whole. In the former the divine is the pri- 
mary actor and giver, in the latter it is primarily and 
responsively the human, acting freely under the power 
of the higher. The two without being equal, are, nev- 
ertheless, co-efficient agencies acting toward and ac- 
complishing the same end. The prevailingly human 
and subjective presupposes the more efficient objective 



224 The Mercersburg Theology. 



and sacramental, while the prevailingly divine, super- 
natural, and objective element, anticipates the coop- 
eration of the more subjective and experimental. Chris- 
tian cultus serves its divine purpose in the compre- 
hensive economy of salvation, conformably to the 
higher sacramental energies of the Christ-life work in 
the believer, until the two are glorified together, and 
the latter reaches his full and final consummation of re- 
demption and bliss in the glorification of his body and 
soul together, with those blessed and holy ones 
who have part in the first resurrection. John vi: 40. 

The above-stated logical order of organic transition 
is fully recognized and taught in the Order of W orship. 
First in the baptismal service for children. The offici- 
ating minister exhorts the parents and sponsors of the 
baptized child, that it is their "duty, as soon as it 
shall be able to learn, to remind it often of its baptis- 
mal vows and obligations, and in particular to teach 
it the Lord's prayer, the Apostle's creed and the Ten 
Commandments, that it may know how to pray, what 
to believe and how to live." This reminder in the 
post-baptismal exhortation shows what a great de- 
gree of stress is placed by the Mercersburg school upon 
the fulfillment of indispensable conditions in order that 
the use of the sacrament might have its desired effect. 
So also in the thanksgiving prayer at the close of the 
communion service: "And we most humbly beseech 
Thee, heavenly Father, that we may continue in 
that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as 
Thou hast prepared for us to walk in, through Jesus 
Christ our Lord." Thus the Order of Worship recog- 
nizes the fact that in the kingdom of God, as in the 



The Mercersburg Theology. 225 



order of nature, the sowing of the seed, and the trans- 
plantation of the scion, anticipated the fertilization 
of the soil, the cultivation of tre plant, and the reaping 
of the harvest. 

While christian cultus, under the Mercersburg view 
thereof, including the proclamation from the pulpit, 
the services at the altar and the exercise of faith in the 
province and practice of good works, is primarily with- 
in the realm of the Gospel, it is not to be considered as 
entirely sundered from christian theology. Such was 
Mercersburg's tacit claim or theory as set forth in the 
Order of Worship. Both the truth and the grace which 
come by Jesus Christ, make themselves manifest in 
that book as one and inseparable. It taught theology 
between the lines, and proclaimed its distinctive doc- 
trinal position and principles in all its liturgical form- 
ularies. Its system of rituals was not only intoned, 
but also made a theological necessity, by its system of 
doctrines. The liturgy, being intoned by Mercersburg 
theology, was of logical necessity placed and kept in 
tune with Mercersburg cultus. A collection of dry 
forms, even of the most approved orthodox pattern, 
to be used as a mere pulpit directory of worship, would 
have been like a bottle of old wine in new goat skins. 
Such was not the cultus outlined in the revised liturgy 
or Order of Worship. It was something quite different, 
and therefore at variance with preconceived opinions of 
its assailants. Hence the opposition thereto. Its op- 
ponents, inspired by the spirit of a foreign cult, know- 
ing that the German Reformed church was historically 
and traditionally a liturgical church, sounded the toc- 
15 



226 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



sin of war, and made battle against the theological prem- 
ises of the Order of Worship. 

This opposition was first displayed in something like 
an organized form at the second triennial session of the 
General Synod at Dayton, Ohio, in the fall of 1866. It 
was an ever memorable war between theological giants. 
The writer recalls most vividly the intense interest 
and anxiety which pervaded that synodical assembly. 
Thanks to the great Creator for the power of recollec- 
tion! Though having since wandered forty-four years 
in the wilderness of ecclesiastical commotion, the im- 
pression then made has never been effaced from the 
tablet of his memory. The General Synod was organ- 
ized by the election of Rev. Daniel Zacharias, D.D., 
President, and Rev. David Winters, Vice President, 
with Rev. Isaac H. Reiter, Stated Clerk. When the 
subject of the liturgy came up for consideration the 
whole matter was referred to a committee. The ma- 
jority report of that committee included the following 
as its essential substance: That "the movement in 
the German Reformed church in reference to liturgical 
worship should be left to work out its legitimate re- 
sults in a free and untrammeled way. That the W est- 
ern Synod, in conformity with its own request, be au- 
thorized to continue its labors in preparing a liturgy. 
That the Revised Liturgy, reported to this Synod by the 
Eastern Synod, according to the direction of the Gen- 
eral Synod of Pittsburgh, entitled an Order of Worship 
for the Reformed Church, be and is hereby allowed as 
an Order of Worship proper to be used in the congrega- 
tions and families of the Reformed Church; that this 
action is not designed to interfere in any way with that 



The Mercersburg Theology. 227 

freedom, which is now enjoyed in regard to the Liturgy 
by all such ministers and congregations as may not 
be prepared to introduce it in whole or in part." 

The minority report, which was offered by Rev. J. 
H. Good, including fifteen different points of objection, 
asked the General Synod not to endorse the Revised 
Liturgy as the authorized Order of Worship, although 
the majority report had only asked that it be "allowed" 
as an Order of Worship for such ministers and congrega- 
tions as were " prepared to introduce it in whole or in 
part." The discussion took place upon the motion 
to adopt the minority report, continuing three days 
and three nights, and ended by its rejection, following 
with the approval of the majority report by a clear 
majority of the delegates of the General Synod. 

The following theological points in the Revised Lit- 
urgy were objected to and assailed in that most mem- 
orable assembly: 1. Its christological point of view. 
The theology that underlies the order of worship grounds 
itself in the fact that "Jesus Christ is the principle of 
Christianity, and that the full sense of the Gospel is 
to be reached only in and through the revelation which 
is comprehended in his glorious person." Hence, the 
whole system of man's salvation is to be understood 
and admitted from this view-point. As the Coperni- 
can, or New Astronomy, is heliocentric rather than 
geocentric, and as the solar system can be scientifically 
viewed and explained upon no other assumption, so 
the system, or objective constitution of Christianity, 
can be correctly viewed from neither the theocentric 
(in the deistic sense) nor anthropocentric standpoint, 
but from the christocentric, or from the standpoint 



228 The Mercersburg Theology. 



of him who proclaimed himself the " Light of the 
World." This was the position and contention of 
the liturgical party at Dayton in 1866. The other 
side joined issue on this and other correlative 
points so far as they could agree among themselves 
upon any positive principle of theology. The discus- 
sion, though conducted in great earnestness, was noted 
for the absence of all acrimony. The amenities of the 
situation were carefully observed by all. Charges 
and counter-charges were toned down by pleasantries 
and witticisms. Dr. Harbaugh told some of the breth- 
ern that if they persisted in hunting heretics they could 
see them by looking into a glass darkly. The Mer- 
cersburg party was charged with teaching Panchristism. 
To this Dr. Nevin replied: "We have good company. 
It is the position of St. Paul who taught that Christ 
is all and in all." 

2. Its ecclesiological position. It was becoming 
manifest that the order of worship viewed the church 
in the only proper sense and logical interpretation of 
the Apostle's Creed, the continuation in time of the 
powers of the heavenly world as an organism in which 
the supernatural and natural are historically working 
in conjunction, in a real economy of grace and truth, 
to the intent that Christ, therein, as the governing head 
and animating heart of his own mystical bod}^, may, 
by the meditating agency of the Holy Ghost, dwell in 
its members and bring many sons to glory. This was 
regarded by some of the good brethren as dangerous 
and intolerable heresy. Too much account was made 
of Christ's body and bride. The counter-claim was 
made by the antiliturgical party, that the church was 



The Mercersburg Theology. 229 



ne ther an object of faith in the sense of possessing 
supernatural elements and factors, nor divine in any 
sense not equally true of any piously disposed associa- 
tion of religious people. These brethern were doubt- 
less really sincere in holding their views, and as candid 
in the advocacy thereof as were the Mercersburg men 
in contending for their apprehension of the truth. For 
some reason the opponents could not distinguish be- 
tween the church as an object of faith and the Bible 
as a book to be believed. Hence the intimation on 
the part of some of them that the Mercersburg men 
were trying to substitute the church for the Bible, and 
the traditions of men for the commandments of God. 
Among tbem was the genial young minister, the Rev. 
Frederick Rupley, D.D., who in his eloquent appeal 
for the old Book and for divine authority, exclaimed: 
"If the foundations be destroyed, what can the rihgt- 
eous do?" This position they persisted in maintain- 
ing notwithstanding that one of their own number and 
gallant leader, Dr. J. H. A. Bomberger, had already 
placed himself on record as saying that "The Church 
is as truly divine as the divine Word."* 

3. Some phraseology in the Ordination Service. 
It is obviously a part of the system of doctrine under- 
lying the Order of Worship, that the office of the minis- 
try "is of divine origin, and of truly supernatural char- 
acter and force; flowing directly from the Lord Jesus 
Christ, as the fruit of his resurrection and triumphant 
ascension into heaven, and being designed by him 
to carry forward the purposes of his grace upon the 
earth, in the salvation of men, by the church, to the 

* Mercersburg Review, 1849, p. 368. 



230 The Mercersbtjrg Theology. 



end of time;" that the minister's ordination "is not 
merely an impressive ceremony/' but also his actual 
investiture with the power of the office itself; that the 
minister who is "called of God" to his holy office has 
reason to expect that, through the laying on of the 
hands of the Presbytery or officiating ministers, they 
will receive the gift and grace of the Holy Ghost, 
thus enabling him to fulfill his heavenly commission 
and trust. The orthodoxy of this position was ques- 
tioned as smacking too much of a sacerdotal arroga- 
tion of divine authority. From their view-point the 
objectors were consistent. They reasoned logically 
from false premises, and reached a false conclusion. 
Their conceptions of the church would not justify 
them in looking upon ordination as anything more than 
an inaugural ceremony or anything less than priestly 
manipulation. From the premises of the liturgical party 
it was just the opposite. They were logically consis- 
tent in teaching that there may be an actual convey- 
ance of heavenly power, because the church as "the 
fulness of him that filleth all in all," had such power 
to convey that with which she was actually invested 
by him "in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the God 
head bodily." And under no other view could a min- 
ister of a logical mind regard his commission as having 
the quality and force answerable to the order of au- 
thority from which he receives his ordination. This 
question of the nature of ministerial authority and the 
mode of its derivation, was not so thoroughly discussed 
in the consideration of the Ordination Service as under 
the next point, viz. : 

4. The Declaration of Pardon. Upon the truth 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



231 



of the assumption, and the assumption of the truth, 
that the holy catholic church, considered in the sense 
of the creed, as an object of faith and the veritable 
embodiment of God's kingdom on earth, is replete with 
heavenly and supernatural powers, the Order of Wor- 
ship is consistent with itself in making room for the 
Declaration of Pardon to "as many" as are " beloved 
in the Lord," and make " confession of their sins unto 
God with hearty repentance and sincere faith, being 
resolved to turn from them, and to follow after right- 
eousness and holiness in time to come." To this the 
opposing party took exceptions. The exceptions were 
taken upon the assumption, and accompanied with 
the charge that the Declaration implied that minis- 
ters could pardon sins. These exceptions, with their 
assumptions, were met by a unanimous chorus of de- 
nial that any such assumption was justified by the 
premises, when considered without prejudice. One 
of the Mercersburg men so far lost his christian equil- 
ibrium as to "deny the soft impeachment of the al- 
legation and defy the enameled teeth of the alligator." 
Dr. Nevin then took the floor. He was sixty-three 
years of age, and just in the meridian of his immortal 
manhood. His commanding presence was the signal 
for a full restoration of synodical decorum and chris- 
tian courtesy. He took up the last thread of the ar- 
gument and cleared the discussion of all its unconscious 
sophistry and special pleading at the bar of everlasting- 
truth. The members of the assembly crowded for- 
ward to catch every word, uttered as from lips of an 
inspired christian oracle. He analyzed the Declara- 
tion and interpreted its language in the plainest of 



232 The Mercersburg Theology. 



Anglo-Saxon terms. The following is the substance 
of what he said upon that point in the more general 
discussion of that memorable occasion:* 

"It breathes, we are told, an odor of sacerdotalism; 
and serves to break the direct immediate relation that 
should hold in the case between the believer and his 
Lord. Now, looking at the form itself, its terms cer- 
tainly would seem to be safe enough in this view even 
for the most fastidious Puritanic judgment. For 
they only say, in fact, what anyone may say, and what 
all are bound to believe, of God's grace toward the 
penitent through the Gospel. 'Unto as many of you, 
beloved brethren/ the form runs, 'as truly repent 
of your sins, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, with 
full purpose of new obedience, ' to such and no others, 
'I announce and declare by the authority and in the 
name of Christ ' — not by my own or any other author- 
ity — 'that your sins are forgiven in heaven, accord- 
ing to his Gospel through the perfect merit of Jesus 
Christ our Lord. ' Is there more in this at- any time, 
than the declaration of what is at all times and in all 
places true? Does it imply that the minister himself 
pretends to forgive sins? Does it not in the strongest 
manner say just the opposite? What better is it, then, 
than spiritual prudery of the most captious sort to 
put on a show of being scandalized with it in any such 
view?" 

The most interesting part of that discussion turned 
upon the question as to whether the minister made the 
declaration of pardon in the exercise of the prophetic 
or the priestly function of his ministry. The anti- 

* Mercersburg Review, 1867, p. 56. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 233 



liturgical party, led at this point by the Rev. Jeremiah 
H. Good, then Professor of Mathematics in Heidelberg 
College, maintained that there was no priestly element 
or function in the holy office; that, notwithstanding 
the teaching of questions 31 and 32 of the Heidelberg 
Catechism, that the christian is a partaker of Christ's 
anointing, and the generally admitted truth of the 
Protestant doctrine of the general priesthood of all 
believers, there is in the christian economy no priest 
in any sense, except the great High Priest Jesus Christ ; 
that the minister might pray the Apostolic benedic- 
tion at his dispersing audience, but had no authority 
to pronounce it upon his people; that the declaration 
might be announced from the pulpit, but not pronounc- 
ed from the altar; in short, that there is no altar in 
the New Testament Sanctuary; that the preacher 
might take his position at "the public desk" and state 
that the Gospel promised pardon to the penitent, but 
not that the Gospel authorized its regularly constituted 
ministerial heralds to pronounce the same declaration 
of evangelical truth ; that the ambassador of Christ in 
Christ's stead might tell the poor penitent to "take up 
his bed and walk, " but not presume so far as to commit 
the unpardonable sin of prelatic arrogancy as to "de- 
clare to the penitent believer by the authority of the Gos- 
pel that all his sins are remitted and forgiven through 
the perfect satisfaction of the most holy passion and 
death of our Lord Jesus Christ:" this, although pre- 
announced as the "comforting assurance of the grace 
of God promised in the Gospel," not to all, but only 
to such as "repent and believe," was too much for 
the puritanic orthodoxy of the opposition. 



234 The Mercersburg Theology. 



5. The Baptismal Service for Infants. The doc- 
trine underlying this service obviously teaches that 
"all were by nature the children of wrath," "dead in 
sins/' "walked according to the prince of the power of 
the air, the spirit that now worked in the children of 
disobedience," and that christians are in some sense, 
and by some means of grace, delivered "from the power 
of the devil, " or " from the power of darkness and trans- 
lated or transplanted into the kingdom of God's dear 
Son." This the Mercersburg champions did not at- 
tempt to deny. They refused, however, to be put 
out of course and placed on the defensive by the in- 
ferences which were drawn by the brethren of the left. 
The charge was made that the Order of Worship taught 
baptismal regeneration. When asked what they meant 
by the term, the answers came back in many forms and 
with much logomachy. The brethren from the east 
responded that they were satisfied with what the Scrip- 
tures taught upon the subject: that in baptism the 
Holy Ghost places the proper subjects thereof in the 
realm of grace and in the way of ultimate and complete 
salvation. 

The discussion at this stage took a very wide range. 
The antiliturgical party was hopelessly divided and 
subdivided in factions and subfactions. Some of them 
professed to be liturgical, and reproved their own com- 
panions in tribulation for being avowedly against all 
forms in christian worship. None of them wanted a 
liturgy like the Order of Worship. They would not 
"allow" its use, as all that the majority report asked 
for. Some of them could become reconc led to a pul- 
pit directory, but not to an altar service. In f act they 



The Mercersburg Theology. 235 

had no place for an altar. Touching the theology of 
the Revised Liturgy, everything was in confusion of 
abstract negatives among those who took exceptions 
to the part which the devil was charged with perform- 
ing in the matter of humanity under the bondage of 
sin. At this point Dr. Herman Rust, then a professor 
in Heidelberg Seminary, and subsequently for four 
years the writer's senior colleague in the faculty of 
that institution, came forward in his native modesty 
and christian amiability and sounded a note which to 
some extent became the rallying point for such as took 
to his way of thinking. He spoke in part and in sub- 
stance the address which he repeated at the con- 
vention held the next year at Myerstown, Pa., where 
according to its proceedings, published in pamphlet 
form, page 19, he said : 

"According to the Mercersburg theology as expressed 
by the church papers and reviews, there are two spheres. 
The sphere of nature is outside of the church and the 
sphere of grace is inside the church. All inside the 
church are under Christ and all outside of the church 
are subject to the government of the devil. They 
hold that an infant born of christian parents is entire- 
ly the subject of the devil, and that by the sacramental 
service it is brought inside of the church. Our theory 
is that the children of believing, true and faithful 
christian parents are in a sense inside the church, that 
is they are included in the covenant of promise. Their 
theory as I have explained it is the foundation of the 
Revised Liturgy. At Dayton they set me down as a 
belligerent, as an enemy of the Reformed Church, be- 
cause I have opposed this doctrine, but that has not 



236 The Mercersburg Theology. 



hurt me much. * * * If the children of believ- 
ing parents belong to the sphere of nature and are 
subjects of the devil, like the children of the heathen 
and the Jews, then no christian minister would have 
the right to baptize any of them." 

Perhaps the most intense feeling aroused by that 
discussion at Dayton over the theology of the baptis- 
mal service for infants was occasioned by Dr. Herman 
Rust and Dr. Henry Harbaugh. Dr. Rust, in his de- 
nial that the children of christian parents are by na- 
ture the children of wrath, or under the power of the 
devil, showed that though he had not enough iron in 
his blood to tackle and denounce the heresy of the 
British monk, nevertheless made it manifest that he was 
possessed of that charity which is disposed to think 
no evil. Under the control of such sentiment he gave 
way to the emotions of his own tender heart and spoke 
as follows: "V/ho can believe that the little infant 
sleeping so sweetly upon its mother's bosom, is under 
the power of the devil? Who could make the fond 
mother believe it?" To this Dr. Haibaugh arose and 
exclaimed :* "Mr. President ! Is not this synod start- 
led at such Pelagianism and such sentimentalism? 
What is sentimentality in religion but the placing of 
human feeling above divine revelation, human feeling 
sitting in judgment upon God's word? It was this 
soft sentimentality now vaporing within these walls 

* We recall that exciting incident which stamped its impress 
so vividly upon our memory; and afterwards confirmed the 
correctness of our recollection by writing to Dr. Harbaugh, who 
was kind enough to give us access to the notes which he had 
taken at the said General Synod. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 237 



that wrought such sad havoc in the fatherland during 
the eighteenth century until a large part of Germany 
was placed under the bondage of a refined rationalism, 
worse, if possible, than the power of the devil." 

Following Dr. Harbaugh, Dr. Nevin took the floor 
and said in substance what he wrote one month later 
for the Mercersburg Review for January, 1867, p. 58: 
"Many at least, at the synod at Dayton, could hardly 
trust their ears, when they heard a professor of theol- 
ogy in the Reformed Church say there openly that 
he for his part could not go with the Liturgy where 
it speaks of deliverance of our children through bap- 
tism 'from the power of the devil;' he did not be- 
lieve it to be so bad with the children of christians 
naturally as that ; it was enough to appeal to the com- 
mon sensibilities of parents (mothers particularly) 
to prove the contrary! This sounds strange certainly; 
but it needs only a little reflection to preceive that it 
is, after all, only the working out of a new point of 
the same false spiritualism, which finds it so hard to 
understand or acknowledge, on the other side, the pres- 
ence of any real objective grace in baptism." 

In view of the historical record referred to in the 
foregoing paragraphs, and in justice to the baptismal 
service thereby shown to have been brought under a 
criticism that was either pitiable in its stupidity or 
contemptible for its perversion of an obviously and 
clearly expressed doctrinal position of the Order of 
Worship, let us analyze the service and note its phras- 
eology. Does it teach baptismal regeneration in the 
sense that its critics would give meaning to that term? 
Certainly there is nothing in the language itself that 



238 The Mercersburg Theology. 

would justify the interpretation of its phraseology or 
warrant the conclusion that a sacramental ceremony 
was expected to accomplish anything of or for itself. 
That "benefits" were expected to be "bestowed" is 
clearly taught; but by whom? "God on his part." 
For whose sake? "For the sake of his well beloved 
Son." How? By baptism, as the efficient source or 
cause of the blessing conferred? No, but "through 
the sacrament of baptism." By whom? The offici- 
ating minister? No, "by the Holy Ghost." And 
what but the very quintessence of religious infidelity 
would presume to limit either the power or the pre- 
rogative of that same "Spirit of God" that once be- 
fore had "moved upon the face of the water." (Gen. 
1: 2) to bring order out of chaos; and that selfsame 
spirit to whom Christ referred (John iii: 5) when he 
was teaching Nicodemus the way of life? 

And what does the service call the positive side of 
that great benefit which the parents are encouraged 
to "seek" for their children at the baptismal font? 
It is called "the gift of a new and spiritual life." De- 
liverance from the power of the devil or the power of 
darkness and remission of sins is the negative or con- 
sequential effect of the "new and spiritual life by the 
Holy Ghost." It will be observed that the succession 
from positive to negative is after the manner accord- 
ing to which the power of the heavenly world reveals 
itself in the creed of Christendom. The life of Christ 
as the ground-principle of the "communion of saints" 
does not merely follow, but rather actually precedes 
and brings to pass after its first manifestation and im- 
plantation, as a most logical consequence, the removal 



The Mercersburg Theology. 239 



and therefore the remission of sin. Life destroys death; 
Light removes darkness; the "strong man armed" 
is driven out by a " stronger than he." The "palace". 
(Luke xi: 21) of the human personality is not to be 
made and left void by exorcism,, but quickened, 
enlightened and cleansed by the coming thereinto of 
its necessary principle and proper contents, in order to 
its organ: c completion and full adornment. Not strict- 
ly upon the questionable assumption that the super- 
natural, like nature, despises a vacuum, bu t that Christ 
may be all, and in all. If he who is disposed to throw 
up his hyper-spiritual hands at a "faithful Savior's" 
mode of delivering the children (See Heidelberg Cate- 
chism, Question 1) "from all the power of the devil,", 
and call it exorcism, let him settle that matter where 
it belongs — between the devil and himself. And, fur- 
thermore, if any are not satisfied with God's way of 
translating the proper subjects of baptism "into the 
kingdom of His dear Son" and of thus placing them 
in the way of salvation, let them cease making a show 
of what they regard as an empty ceremony and take 
to the cult of the more consistent Quakers. 

6. Some of the terms in the Communion Service. 
Exceptions were taken at Dayton to two sections of 
phraseology used therein on account of the alleged 
heresy underlying them. First, the Consecratory Pray- 
er was charged with hiding a Lutheran spook in a Re- 
formed garret. The objectionable part is as follows: 
"Almighty God, our heavenly Father, send down, we 
beseech Thee, the powerful benediction of thy Holy 
Spirit upon these elements of bread and wine, that 
being set apart from a common to a sacred and mys- 



240 The Mercersburg Theology. 



tical use, they may exhibit and represent to us with 
true effect the body and blood of Thy Son Jesus Christ. 1 1 
The objectors were neither clear in their own minds 
nor agreed among themselves as to whether it was con- 
substantiation or transubstantiation that sought to 
disguise itself in this consecratory position. The sec- 
ond section of objectionable phraseology was in the 
first collect of the eucharistic prayer, as follows : 1 1 And 
be pleased now, most merciful Father, graciously to 
receive at our hands this memorial of the blessed sac- 
rifice of thy Son." Fault was found with this lan- 
guage as something similar to the Romish Mass, so 
forcefully and unsparingly denounced in the 80th ques- 
tion of the Heidelberg Catechism. Upon these two 
points the discussion was carried into the inmost sanc- 
tuary of the whole christian worship. A new and 
powerful champion then stepped into the arena of that 
memorable controversy. Dr. J. H. A. Bomberger 
seems to have felt that it was now safe for him to rep- 
resent the opposition to the alleged Mercersburg in- 
novation. Up to that point his time had not come. 
For a very good and sufficient reason he had taken little 
part in the disputation over the baptismal service. 
The beloved brother had not forgotten that he had 
already placed himself on record in his little book on 
Infant Regeneration and Infant Baptism, pp. 179, 180, 
182, as measurably and yet guardedly in sympathy 
with the doctrinal position of the Order of Worship. 
In that book he had shown himself as out of agreement 
with many of his brethren of antisacramental tenden- 
cies. Dr. Bomberger had taught and practiced, and 
with his powerful pen had defended a Reformed chris- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 241 

tian cultus, purer than Puritanism. The following 
are some of the utterances that helped to make his 
book such a welcome guest at the homes of little chil- 
dren who had been " delivered from the power of dark- 
ness and translated into the kingdom of God's dear 
Son through the sacrament of baptism which Christ 
had ordered for the communication of such great grace " 
— "The Lord chooses to connect with the sacrament 
of baptism, properly administered, the formal official 
washing away of the stain of original sin from the in- 
fant heart." p. 179. "The third benefit formally se- 
cured by baptism is the present renewal of the nature 
of the child," p. 180. "The germ of a new life is thus 
planted in the soul of the child/ 7 p. 182. 

The above being a part of his record with reference 
to the office of baptism, the good brother was wise in 
not helping to pull down the temple which he had la- 
bored so hard to erect. But now in the discussion 
over the office of the holy communion he was free to 
take part without manifest inconsistency. Hence, 
the two strong men of the church met upon the floor 
of the General Synod. Their appearance in the central 
arena made historic that great theological combat. 
Dr. Bomberger had no superior in debate. Dr. Nevin 
had no equal in his masterly knowledge and use of 
ecclesiastical erudition, and no superior in the sym- 
metry and beauty of christian manhood. With a 
modest yet mighty sweep of power he brushed away 
the sophistry of his adroit antagonist and carried the 
banner of truth to overwhelming victory. In so doing 
he tore the habiliments of disguise from the leger- 
demain that sought to juggle with the sacred language 
16 



242 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



of the holy communion service by attempting to read 
"memorial sacrifice" into "this memorial of the blessed 
sacrifice" oflChrist, as so plainly expressed in the Re- 
vised Liturgy* He unmasked the spirit of that cru- 
sade of opposition against the Order of Worship that 
sought to associate if not identify its form of commun- 
ion service with "the accursed idolatry of the Romish 
Mass." He showed that the teachings underlying 
the order of worship respecting the Lord's supper were 
essentially identical, in language and otherwise, with 
the old Reformed doctrine as advocated by Calvin, 
expressed in the Heidelberg Catechism, and trans- 
mitted in all orthodox channels down through all the 
centuries since the Reformation, until it fell into the 
mold of modern religious spiritua'ism which was seek- 
ing to take away our Lord, deny the objective force 
and powers of the heavenly world in the sacrament, 
and plunge the church of the Reformation into the 
abyss of pietistic sentimentalism. At that point the 
beginning of the end drew nigh. The majority report 
prevailed, and the verdict was recorded in favor of 
religious freedom. The matter was left for the move- 
ment to work out its own logical results. The iren- 
ical spirit of Zwingli and the Heidelberg Cathechism 
governed the majority of that General Synod. The 
curtain dropped upon the memorable scene. The 
most of those great good men who took part in that 
discussion have laid their armor down. Their deeds 
are in history, their souls are in glory, and their works 
do follow after them. 



* For a more full, definite and authentic account of the above 
noted discussion see Mercersburg Review, 1867, pp. 64 65 



LECTURE XIII. 



Christian Cultus — Continued. 

The only question settled at Dayton, so far as ma- 
jorities have power to settle such matters, was, 1st, 
That the Western Synod was authorized, in compli- 
ance with its own request made at Pittsburgh three 
years previously, to prepare a liturgy to suit itself. 
2nd. That the Order of Worship was a book whose 
use was "allowed" as "proper" by those who prefer- 
red it, until the whole liturgical movement had worked 
out its results in a logical and untrammeled way. 3rd. 
That nothing should interfere with the full freedom of 
worship, to the intent that brotherly love might con- 
tinue. This action was in accord with the action of 
the Eastern Synod at Allentown, Pa., 1857, when the 
Provisional L iturgywas approved as such, by the adop- 
tion of the committee's report with a unanimous vote. 
In that action the mother synod of the German Re- 
formed Church in the United States, after five years 
of hard work by its committee, consisting of such 
christian and scholarly men as Drs. Philip Schaff, 
John W. Nevin, B. C. Wolf, John H. A. Bomberger 
and Daniel Zacharias, said:* "It is a matter of much 
satisfaction, we may be allowed to add, that no at- 
tempt is to be made to force the liturgy upon the church 

* See minutes of the Eastern Synod, 1857, also Mercersburg 
Review, 1858, pp. 224, 225. 

243 



244 The Mercersburg Theology. 

without such general and free consent to its use. The 
Synod has ordered it to be prepared and published 
only for provisional use." * * * It must go 
forth among the churches simply as an experiment. 
Every congregation is left to settle the question for 
itself." Nine years after that action, the General 
Synod having in the meantime been organized, the 
Provisional Liturgy having been revised, and the West- 
ern church having been authorized to prepare a liturgy 
for its own wants, it was presented at Dayton, not as 
a book to be forced upon any section of the church, 
but as an order of worship whose use it was thought 
"proper" to be "allowed" in those churches desir- 
ing it as a help in the services of the sanctuary. Such 
action, it would seem, was equally fair and impartial 
to all parties, and ought to have been submitted to as 
entirely satisfactory to all schools of theology and all 
sections of the church. Such, however, was not the 
case. Although the matter had been so decided by 
a clear majority, so mewould not agree to disagree, with 
christian forbearance and patience until all could come 
to a greater degree of unity in the more essential sub- 
stance as well as form in christian worship. Hence, 
the historic scene at Marburg was repeated at Dayton. 
The fraternal hand of Zwingli was rejected, and the 
irenical spirit of the Swiss reformer was grieved in 
sorrow and gloomy forebodings of that sad, sad chap- 
ter since written in the history of the Reformed Church 
in the United States. 

The underlying, though only partially recognized, 
question under discussion at Dayton was primarily 
neither one of theology nor cultus. The real matter 



The Mercersburg Theology. 245 

at issue was the question of historical development, 
expressive in something like the following form: Was 
God's revelation of himself to man, and through man, 
fully made and correctly apprehended in all its mean- 
ing when the canon of inspired Scriptures had been 
given to the church, and through the church to the 
world? The question is not whether Christianity can 
change its essential substance, the truth its eternal 
essence, or the will of God become otherwise than the 
absolute norm of all righteous law; but whether it does 
not belong to the very nature of divine revelation that 
it should unfold itself in the way of historic develop- 
ment or progressive evolution, both theoretically and 
practically. The first and governing principle of 
Mercersburg theology is that the church, as the body 
of Christ and the embodiment of his kingdom in the 
world, is organically charged and constitutionally chart- 
ered with the necessity of progressive development in 
order to the fulfillment of her full mission. This doc- 
trine was first injected into American Christendom, and 
offered as a healing balm to much defective orthodoxy 
by Dr. Philip Schaff, who by its first enunciation in 
1845, created no small stir in the Reformed Church and 
in the land of his adoption. It was the governing 
principle in all his reading and writing of church his- 
tory and the keynote to all the music of his voluminous 
literary productions. It made him the most popular 
church-historian of the western continent, and opened 
the door for him into the Presbyterian church and into 
the confidence of Puritanism itself. In the very prime 
of his manhood, Dr. Schaff served for five years on the 
committee appointed to prepare the liturgy which in 



246 The Mercersburg Theology. 



its revised form was under discussion at Dayton, 
Governed by the idea of historical development in the 
cultus as well as in the theology of the church, Dr. 
Schaff and other members of the committee were con- 
sistent with themselves in preparing and presenting 
to the church a liturgy in advance of anything that 
the church had previously had in her best rituals. 
Development in the life of the church must necessarily 
carry with it a consequent and corresponding develop- 
ment in dogma and doctrine, which again makes it 
logically necessary for a corresponding change in cul- 
tus and forms of worship. It is only a finished and 
fossilized orthodoxy that pins its faith to the shrouds 
of the fathers, and builds its creeds and its cultus upon 
the coffin-lids of the ages past. If there be no such 
progress in the human apprehension of divine truth, 
no historic development in the science of theology, 
no going on to perfection in christian cultus, no ripe 
corn in the ear succeeding the crudeness of the blade, 
then the Mercersburg theory is false in the assump- 
tion of an underlying principle which has no existence 
in truth and in history; and consequently the liturgi- 
cal party at Dayton was wrong. If, upon the other 
hand, there is such progress and development in accord 
with God's great plan of the ages, and constitutionally 
inherent in the church, necessitating change in the 
outward forms of christian cultus, the opponents of 
the Order of Worship were wrong, and cannot become 
consistent with themselves until they forget the things 
that are before and press backward into some dessi- 
cated form of Protestant orthodoxy, or take to the 
Roman Catholic Church which repudiates all idea of 



The Mercersburg Theology. 247 



organic growth in Christendom, and abides forever in 
the stationary infallibility of her fixed and finished 
ecclesiasticism. 

Whether right or wrong in their views and votes 
at Dayton, a few of the minority party went home 
dissatisfied. The most of these were from the East. 
They were not obliged, according to the action of the 
General Synod, to use the Order of Worship there and 
then " allowed;" yet they insisted that others should 
not be permitted the enjoyment of that freedom in 
worship which had been so cheerfully and wisely grant- 
ed to themselves. This dissatisfaction organized it- 
self in the following year, 1867, at Myerstown, Pa., 
into a nucleus of opposition v/hich for more than a de- 
cade of years fanned itself into a contention that help- 
ed to mar the peace and hinder the prosperity of our 
Reformed Zion. It will, however, always stand on 
history's page as a credit to the western church, and 
the ministers graduated from Heidelberg Theological 
Seminary, that not one of their number was present 
to take part in the questionable proceedings of that 
assembly. It seems that the spirit of Dr. Emanuel 
V. Gerhart and Dr. Moses Kieffer, their former teachers 
at Heidelberg, lingered in their lives like the fragrant 
breath of the divine Master. 

The culmination of the Peace Movement, and the 
final adoption of the peace compact, or articles of agree- 
ment at Akron in 1887, created a new epoch, and start- 
ed the Reformed Church upon a new period of her his- 
tory in the United States of America. The adoption 
of the Directory of Worship made it an ordinance for 
use in her cultus. There was, however, some diver- 



248 The Mercersburg Theology. 



sity of sentiment as to whether the Directory was an 
ordinance or the ordinance, as a liturgy. To say that 
the Mercersburg wing of the church was ent rely sat- 
isfied with the book as an order of worship would be 
to strain the truth. Some of them felt it was not what 
they had a right to expect from the logical working 
out of their premises. It was thought that the cherish- 
ed principle of their doctrine of historic development 
of theological science, leading up to a corresponding 
cultus, had been unnecessarily compromised, if not 
sacrificed, for the sake of a peace which in their judg- 
ment amounted to a mere truce. The compromise, 
or seeming reconciliation, was, however, no more nor 
less than what could, or should have been expected. 
It was just what had been impliedly nominated in the 
bond of peace movement. The Mercersburg theology 
had simply adapted itself to the surrounding circum- 
stances or condition of things in the church which had 
both fostered and "allowed" it. This was nothing 
out of the ordinary course of the evolution of the life 
of the Holy Catholic Church. Such adaptation to 
environments and surrounding conditions has been 
true of the Gospel itself in all ages. The law of his- 
toric development, so zealously contended for by the 
Mercersburg school, inheres constitutionally in Chris- 
tianity as a system of life and truth unfolding itself 
concretely in the whole of humanity. As such it is too 
far-reaching in its operations and catholic mission to 
be confined to any pent up Utica in the broad and uni- 
versal domain of the world's comprehensive onflow. 
This the Mercersburg apostles and intelligent disci- 
ples understood; and hence, if any of them failed to 



The Mercersburg Theology. 249 



accept the logical situtation as brought to its full rev- 
elation at Akron, they were simply inconsistent with 
themselves. Upon the other hand, to the extent that 
the anti-Mercersburg party refused to accept the Di- 
rectory of Worship and use it in good faith in the full 
enjoyment of the freedom authorized and provided 
for in the rubrics, they were equally inconsistent in 
crying for peace when there was no peace, in the sense 
of a positive cooperation and approximate concert of 
action in the cultus of the whole church. Further- 
more, when men in the east insisted upon the contin- 
ued use of the old Order of Worship rather than the 
authorized ordinance known and to be known as the 
Directory of Worship, they made themselves hetero- 
geneous yoke-fellows with those who never had had 
any wish for a liturgy of any sort, because they were 
controlled by a spirit of separatists self-sufficiency 
which claims to have no need of directory or help from 
the church which is the mother of us all. 

At this point it is proper that we pause, and poise 
ourselves for a moment to consider an element upon 
which great stress is laid by the school of thought 
now under review. Mercersburg Anthropology or 
Psychology must have its proper setting in order to 
do justice to the distinctive system in which it stands. 
It has already been shown in Lecture VI that the hu- 
man soul in the normal exercise of its constitutional 
functions is subject to the law of both freedom and 
authority in its mutual interaction and cooperation, 
to bring out the legitimate product of both its mental 
and moral activities. Truth in the intellect must be 
at the same time truth in the will. The soul is created 



250 The Mercersburg Theology. 

to be a self-determining power. To destroy or en- 
slave the volitional function of man's wonderful nature 
would be a violation for which there could be no atone- 
ment. Especially is this true in the realm of religion 
and in the sacred sanctuary of christian worship. Here 
the chief apostles of Mercersburg philosophy have al- 
ways shown themselves consistent. According to their 
view, when not befogged, freedom and authority are 
seen to complement each other in the high realm of 
human and christian responsibility. Hence their votes 
will appear in the light of consistency, under a careful 
analysis of the motives that prompted them in the 
exercise of their ecclesiastical franchise. At Cincin- 
nati, 1872, in the Dunn appeal case, they voted for 
the protection and continuation of the authority of 
synods and classes and all other properly constituted 
church judicatories in the matter of apportionments, 
as over against its abuse by an undue stress laid upon 
private judgment, in defiance of such authority. At 
Fort Wayne, 1875, in the Super appeal case, they were 
on the side of authority in the regulation of theologi- 
cal professors or teachers. On the other hand, the 
same men then present voted for the greatest amount 
of freedom consistent with authority in matters touch- 
ing directly the most sacred relation between the con- 
science of the individual worshiper and his God. 
This consistency appears in the records of the 21 years 
of history of the liturgical question, from Dayton, 1866, 
to Akron, 1887. At Dayton they only asked for and 
received what they were willing to grant to others, 
viz : the privilege of using their own order of worship. 
At Philadelphia, 1869, they cheerfully -voted to allow 



The Mercersburg Theology. 251 



the Western church to use " A liturgy or order of wor- 
ship for the Reformed church/' prepared by the West. 
At Lancaster, Pa., 1878, after one of their own number 
had introduced the subject-matter, they all joined to 
make the sentiment and vote of that General Synod, 
and of the whole church which it represented, unani- 
mous in favor of a Peace Commission to bring about, 
as far as possible, a "reconciliation and adjustment of 
existing differences and difficulties" by devising apian 
and creating a sentiment that would guarantee " unity 
in essentials, liberty in doubtful, and charity in all 
things pertaining to the church." At Tiffin, 1881, 
they voted with a great majority of the delegates for 
the preparation of a Liturgy or Directory of Worship, 
which it was quite generally hoped would be accept- 
able to the whole church. At Baltimore, 1884, they 
helped to make the vote unanimous when it was " Re- 
solved, that the Directory of Worship prepared bythe 
committee of nine and subsequently amended by the 
commission, be and hereby is recommended for approv- 
al" by the classes. At Akron, 1887, they voted with 
the great majority for the resolution. " That the said 
Directory of Worship is hereby declared to be constitu- 
tionally adopted as the Directory of Worship in the 
Reformed Church in the United States." 

The culmination of the Peace Movement and the 
final adoption of its measures at Akron, created an ep- 
och, and started the Reformed Church upon a new per- 
iod of her history in the United States. The adoption 
of the Directory of Worship made it an ordinance to be 
used in her cultus. Although the Mercersburg wing 
was not satisfied at all points with the results of the 



252 The Mercersburg Theology. 



Peace Commission, the more intelligent leaders showed 
their christian sincerity and desire for a full restora- 
tion of brotherly love and peace by a cheerful accept- 
ance of the new situation. This course was more read- 
ily chosen and pursued by those who were philosophic- 
ally inclined to take a dose of their own medicine. 
Their acceptance of the new regime was nothing more 
than a falling into full conformity with their own psy- 
chological teaching respecting the laws of the human 
soul. Mercersburg Psychology had thrown its banner 
over the outer wall, inscribed with the announcement 
that all pure, perfect and acceptable worship includes 
the mutual action and interaction of all the soul's 
functions. The emotional, intellectual and volitional 
functions dare not be forced, but must be permitted 
to cooperate in acceptable worship. Especially must 
the will be allowed its full scope of freedom both in 
fact and in form, subject only to that righteous author- 
ity which constitutionally inheres in the full communion 
of saints. In this combination of freedom with author- 
ity the Mercersburg school was consistent in its conten- 
tion that christian worship includes art in the beauty 
of its holiness, that christian art must have its place 
and perform its part in the sanctuary of the Most High. 
And why indeed should not this comely hand-maid 
of nature become the vestal virgin at the holiest shrine 
of nature's God? Moreover, there is just as really a 
demand for art in prayer as there is in song. There 
can be no superlative beauty of holiness where confu- 
sion rules the services of the Lord's house. Hence the 
importance of forms when used without arbitrary 
encroachment upon the proper province of personal 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



253 



religious freedom, governed by righteous authority, 
as it is in the full communion of saints. These art- 
forms have room in congregational singing: why 
should they not have in the prayers of the worshiping 
assembly, that the two may be glorified together? If 
all these provisions are not involved in the Mercers- 
burg principle in such a sense as to be susceptible or 
capable of working themselves out logically in the 
free and yet orderly worship of the sanctuary, Mercers- 
burg theology is radically defective, and should be sent 
back to the foundry for recast. Upon the other hand, 
it may be added with equal truth that the individual 
member or worshiper in the Reformed Church who 
finds himself either unable or unwilling to bring him- 
self up to this bill of rights and requirements had better 
get himself back to the Plymouth Rock out of which 
he was hewn. 

The duties of the Peace Commission and the implied 
terms of the peace compact necessitated the revision 
of the Order of Worship as well as all other liturgies 
previously used in the Reformed church. After long, 
patient and prayerful consideration and work, the 
commission brought forth the Directory of Yv r orship. 
As to its general outline this book is patterned after 
and based upon the system of theology and cultus that 
peculiarly characterized the first or Provisional Lit- 
urgy, produced by the eastern church and subsequently 
so modified or revised as to becomes the Order of 
Worship. In this last revision by the Peace Commis- 
sion the Directory omitted the table of Scriptural 
Lessons, the Evening Service for the Lord's day, the 
Service to be used at sea, the Service for the reception of 



254 The Mercersburg Theology. 

Immigrants, and the Canticles, Psalms and Ancient 
Hymns. 

The Declaration of Pardon and the Gloria in Ex- 
celsis are omitted from the morning service for the 
Lord's day. The texts of the Gospe s and Epistles 
for the Sundays in the church year, though retained 
for use, are not printed. This change, however, was 
made to reduce the volume to a more convenient size. 
In the service preparatory to the communion the lit- 
tany is omitted, the confession modified, and the dec- 
laration of pardon changed to a declaration of comfort. 
In the Holy Communion the special service is changed 
to the regular service of the Lord's day until the end 
of the sermon. The first collect following the con- 
secratory prayer was modified in its phraseology to 
ease the tender sensibilities of that class of good breth- 
ren who had taken exceptions to the old form at Day- 
ton, 1866; and all the following collects in the eucharis- 
tic prayer down to the last one immediately preceed- 
ing the Lord's prayer, were omitted. To the thanks- 
giving prayer, following the communion, was added 
optional prayer, consisting of scriptual quotations and 
other expressional forms of gratitude. 

In the service for Infant Baptism the Directory omits 
"the power of the devil" and all the rest of the phras- 
eology so objectionable to those who do not believe 
that God can or does grant the child a new and spiri- 
tual life by the Holy Ghost through the sacrament of 
baptism. It also omits the form for the private bap- 
tism of children. The service for the ordination of mis- 
isters is so changed as to permit the candidate for 
heavenly ambassadorship to aver that he " desires 



The Mercersburg Theology. 255 



and expects to receive through the laying on of hands 
official authority for the sacred office, and trusts in 
the grace and aid of the Holy Spirit that he may right- 
ly discharge the duties of his high calling. " The above 
modified form is substituted for what was originally 
included in the Ordination Service as previously set 
forth in the Order of Worship. 

In the service for the Ordination of Elders and Dea- 
cons, the address to the candidate is so modified in 
the Directory of W orship as to omit much in the Order 
of Worship designed to impress with a sense of the super- 
natural element in the office with which they are about 
to be invested, as well as the true conception of apos- 
tolic succession as holding in the truly catholic and 
historic church as the body of Christ and the very em- 
bodiment of his kingdom in the world and in which 
there are " rights and powers, duties and responsibil- 
ities, flowing from that jurisdiction in his church as 
the fruit of his glorious resurrection, and which is to 
be regarded as a new order of life and power in the 
world, extending with unbroken succession from the 
day of Pentecost onward continually to the end of 
time. " 

The services for the Burial of the Dead are somewhat 
abridged in the Directory of Worship, though not ma- 
terially changed. So also is there a commendable 
abridgment of the service for the dedication of a 
church and for the consecration of a burial ground. 
The order of scriptural readings for the family accord- 
ing to the church year is retained in the Directory with- 
out material change. The number of forms for fam- 



256 The Mercersburg Theology. 



ily prayers is quite considerably and very properly re- 
duced. 

Upon the whole the changes made by the commis- 
sion, approved by a constitutional majority of the 
Classes and proclaimed by the General Synod at Akron, 
1887, as an ordinance of the church, were not such as 
to change the essential character of the Order of Wor- 
ship, although some of the changes as seen from the 
writer's point of view were unnecessarily radical and 
seemingly uncalled for. Indeed, some of the modifi- 
cations come dangerously near mutilations, when seen 
through any organ of vision except that most excellent 
gift of charity without which all our worship is an ab- 
omination before God. 

Whatever has been heterogeneously incorporated in 
the Directory as foreign and out of tune with the Mer- 
cersburg conception of christian cultus, and whatever 
may have been omitted therefrom as belonging to the 
system represented by the Order of Worship, the'church 
year has been permitted to retain its place as the open- 
ing key to the Mercersburg idea of the christian sanc- 
tuary and the governing principle of the order and 
organic wholeness of the services that annually and 
perennially encircle the holy shrine. Moerover, as the 
systematically arranged services of the sanctuary are 
regulated by the church year, so the latter is itself 
governed by the objective and supernatural mystery 
of the heavenly world, which has become a present 
reality in time and space by virtue of the incarnation 
and the perpetuation of its force and fruit in the church 
alway to the end of the world. 



LECTURE XIV. 



Mercersbukg Cultus. — Concluded. 

As already stated in the volume of this book the 
meaning and significance of the Order of Worship out- 
lined in the church year grounds itself in the glorious 
mystery of the Holy Trinity, the revelation of which 
moves forward historically in and through the the- 
anthropic manifestation of the infinite and the divine, 
to and through the finite and the human in the great 
"mystery of Godliness, God manifest in the flesh, 
justified in the spirit seen of angels, preached unto the 
Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into 
glory." 

The order of the church year assumes that the in- 
carnation of the son of God is not a mere fact or factor 
in the purpose of God spending its force and ripening 
its fruit in the science of theology or in some doctrinal 
scheme to be accepted by man; but a concrete his- 
toric reality moving on in the full sweep and to the 
full unfolding of its heavenly power, passing into the 
ethical and volitional aptitudes and constitutional 
functions of human nature, inspiring and begetting 
that worship which is ordained and destined to go on 
toward perfection until the tabernacle of God shall 
be with men in its most superlative glory. 

It is not unqualifiedly correct to say that the church 
year is ruled by the leading festivals observed therein. 



17 



257 



258 The Mercersburg Theology. 



True, these are cardinal points in the ecclesiastical 
calendar. They help to shape the traits of its char- 
acter and modulate the successive tones of its varied 
seasons, even as the intervening seasons serve to con- 
nect these festivals with each other in one compre- 
hensive whole by a wisely mediated transition from 
one to another; but all of them and all together are 
governed by that pattern in the holy mount which is 
nothing less than heaven's order of unfolding the mys- 
tery of divine revelation, so majestic in its movement 
from the first advent of the Son of God, through Chris- 
mas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and 
onward with unbroken continuation until he shall 
come again in the greater glory of his second advent 
to take his ransomed people home. 

In full accord with the foregoing paragraph, as well 
as suggestive of the leading thought therein, is the 
following quotation:* "The objective mystery of the 
divine revelation in Christ Jeuss, as apprehended by 
the faith of the church, determined it (the church-year) 
just as the reality of Christ's historical presence in the 
world necessitated the general order of the Gospels, 
moving on as they do from the annunciation to the 
birth and circumcision and baptism, and temptation, 
and suffering and death, and resurrection, and ascen- 
sion, closing the grand services only to open the way 
for a consequent pentecost; and just as the same all- 
controlling mystery, finding a primal authentication 

* From one of the articles of Dr. Elnathan E. Higbee in the 
Mercersburg Review, 1870, p. 135. Dr. Higbee was one of the 
best informed and most authoritative writers on the Pericopes 
of the last century. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



259 



for itself among men in the response of Peter's faith 
"Thou art the Christ," and expanding therefrom, and 
following its own logic not of flesh and blood, neces- 
sitated the sublime order of the creed; just so the self- 
same mystery authenticated its presence in the cultus 
of the church, making it Christocentric, and controlling 
the sequence referred to, in service and in lessons, 
as a part of the same grand and heavenly harmony." 

Men who have no faith in the holy catholic church 
as the body of Christ and the embodiment of his king- 
dom, replete with heavenly powers in the world, are 
not able to fall in and proceed along the line of a sys- 
tematic apprehension of the truth as set forth under 
the foregoing view. 

They erroneously assume that the great head of the 
church has planned and set forth in the holy scriptures 
all forms proper and necessary to be observed in church 
government and christian worship to the end of time. 
Hence they fail to see that the Redeemer's bride, though 
gOA*erned by the written Word, as the charter of her 
liberty and documentary credential of her authority, 
is constitutionally ordained to proceed under the power 
of the highest, the illumination and direction of the 
Holy Ghost, to arrange such an order of worship as 
may be best adapted to her necessities, and most con- 
ducive to the more full communion of all saints in edi- 
fication, prayers and praise. 

The holy scriptures served to supply the church with 
rich material in both Gospel and Epistle lessons, the 
Holy Ghost endued her with power and endowed her 
with authority to organize that material into an order 
or worship, including the . most appropriate and in- 



260 The Mercersburg Theology. 



structive scriptural collections, the most comprehen- 
sive and suitable collects, and the most exalting forma 
of praise to be used in her frequently recurring sanc- 
tuary services. Such being the case, it would have 
been strange indeed had she neglected or refused to 
formulate such a service "for the perfecting of the 
saints, for the work of the ministry and for the edi- 
fying of the body of Christ. " The church was com- 
missioned to teach all nations. Can she then with 
impunity neglect to teach her own children? This 
teaching she cannot do by leaving them as individuals 
to compile collections or read irrelevant portions in a 
haphazard way. There is neither necessity nor ex- 
cuse for such travesty in the sanctuary of the Most 
High God. 

The Mercersburg conception of christian cultus has 
no sympathy with such jumble of pious discord and 
incongruity. Its God is not a God of confusion, but 
of "order as in all the churches of the saints." In 
this particular, Mercersburg is essentially in accord 
with the most orderly part of the church in all ages. 
It is not viewed as unwarranted presumption for the 
church to regard herself as in her very constitution 
and mission in the world endowed with authority to 
consult the architectonic taste and exercise the archi- 
tectural genius of her faith in the construction of such 
a system of worship as that given in the order of the 
ecclesiastical calendar. 

When the church-year is observed in the Sunday 
services of the sanctuary, even though it be with the 
greatest possible liberty consistent with order, there 
is less danger of the ministers flying off tangentially 



The Mercersburg Theology. 261 

into one of the many forms of pulpit sentimentalism 
so common in this age of religious eccentricities. Con- 
formity with such an order of service prevents the 
preacher from becoming a pulpit jumping-jack. There 
is less temptation to sidestep the truth and keep step 
with the music of self-exhibition and the ragtime music 
of the devil's hornpipe. The leading thought, run- 
ning like a golden thread through both the Gospel 
and Epistle lessons for the day, is indicated in the Col- 
lect, and will suggest to the intelligent faith of the 
preacher some appropriate text and theme deducible 
therefrom, which will again suggest a sermon or treat- 
ment true to the Gospel for the day, and at the same 
time adaptable to the condition of the congregation, 
true to the occasion and true to the season in which 
it has its setting. There is no need for anything arbi- 
trary or enforced in such an order of worship. The 
church year, like the church herself, is holy and cath- 
olic. It is adapted to any and all possible environ- 
ments. It contains nothing and encourages nothing 
that interferes with the fullest enjoyment of legitimate 
individual freedom, but rather secures that freedom 
which Jesus doth so freely give to all who are satisfied 
with the liberty which is consistent with law and order. 

Viewing the matter from the Puritan standpoint, 
Protestants claim to be justified in safeguard ng their 
personal religious freedom to worship their God ac- 
cording to the capricious dictations of their own in- 
dividual judgment. Even some of the Reformers look- 
ed with suspicion upon everything that came down 
through the middle ages, bearing anything like a re- 
semblance to the stamp of popery. While the gen- 



262 The Mercersburg Theology. 



eral cycle of the church year, with some of its festival 
seasons, was retained to a considerable extent in the 
Reformed churches, the pericopes did not find a cordial 
welcome into all of them. Calvin looked upon them 
as " silly selections made without judgment." This 
view of the great Genevan reformer seems to have been 
as indelibly impressed upon Presbyterianism as the 
doctrine of arbitrary predestination. To some extent 
the same was true in some of the German Reformed 
churches in America. Destitute of proper discern- 
ment, and failing to make a proper distinction, some 
opposed the Order of Worship out of a fear that they 
would be again " entangled in the yoke of bondage." 
They contended for their own conception of freedom 
in prayer. For this, among other reasons, the Myers- 
town convention was called, 1867. How unfortunate 
it was for themselves as well as for the peace and prog- 
ress of the church that those zealous brethren were 
either unwilling or unable to see that the Order of Wor- 
ship was well designed to foster and secure full freedom 
in both private and public worship. 

As the system of christian cultus advocated by Mer- 
cersburg makes room for and leads up to that free- 
dom in prayer which is consistent with truly evangel- 
ical authority, so does it also help to lead on to that 
spirit of almsgiving and good works which binds them 
together as incorporate parts of christian worship. 
This is not now the case generally in our anti-liturgical 
congregations and denominations. As in the pie-re- 
formation age, there is at present a drift in the direc- 
tion of works which are in no proper sense consequen- 
tially related to faith. Instead of working by love, 



The Mercersburg Theology. 263 



their faith tries to love by works. Much so called 
church-work is so emphasized as to relegate faith into 
the back-ground of mere opinion or belief. Works 
are made to precede faith. Thus the order of the Heid- 
elberg catechism is reversed, and the commandments 
are substituted for the creed. Many seem to forget 
that cultus is not an outworker of salvation, but a most 
reasonable service fitly framed together by that which 
every joint supplieth, in which salvation is completed 
in us and communicated to others. 

As in God's method of promoting human salvation 
cause is placed before effect and action before reaction, 
so in the church year. It is so arranged as to be con- 
stitutionally divisible into two great complemental 
parts. The transition or turning point from the first 
to the second division is on or about Trinity Sunday. 
In the first part of the sacred calendar we have passing 
before the vision of our faith the objective facts of 
God's revelation of himself to us; in the second half 
we have the subjective,in the sense that yve, under the 
outpoured Spirit's power, come to have a growing ap- 
prehension of that objective revelation, and find our- 
selves lifted up into that new heaven wherein dwelleth 
evangelical righteousness. In the first, God primarily 
comes to us ; in the second, we begin to spread our wings 
for a heavenward flight. In the first, God speaks to 
us; in the second, and under the power of a perpetual 
pentecost, we speak to him and to the world with cloven 
tongues as of pentecostal fire. The first exhibits pri- 
marily God's revelation of grace to man; the second 
is primarily the set time for Zion's sons to roll back to 
heaven their responsive anthems of gratitude to Him 



264 The Mercersburg Theology. 



who first loved us. Hence the selection of the Epistle 
lesson for Trinity Sunday from Rev. iv. The door 
had been opened in heaven, or into heaven, and through 
that open door the celestial trumpeter talked out and 
down, as never before, saying: "Come up hither and 
I will show thee things that must be hereafter. " Hence 
also the collect for that day: "0 God, the Creator 
and Savior of the world, who hast made thyself known 
in the work of man's redemption, as the mystery of 
the ever adorable Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, 
Three in One and One in Three; reveal in us, we be- 
seech Thee, the full power of this faith, into which 
we have been planted by baptism, that being born of 
water and of the Spirit, we may by a life of holiness 
be formed into thine image here, and rise to thy bliss- 
ful presence hereafter, there to join with the song of 
the seraphim in praising Thee, world without end. 
Amen." 

The above collect for Trinity Sunday, the turning 
or transition point in the church year, very properly 
starts with a recognition of both the " Creator and Sav- 
ior of the world." In other words, it recognizes the 
twofold revelation which God has made and is making 
of himself in the natural world as Creator, and in the 
supernatural realm as Savior. "The work of man's 
redemption" is the key that unlocks the meaning of 
the mystery of man's creation, to the intent and ex- 
tent that the two may be glorified together, even as 
they now begin to join in one universal response of 
praise which is to continue "world without end." 

It may be further remarked that the two revela- 
tions referred to above are in marvelous harmony with 



The Mercersburg Theology. 265 



each other, both in their constitutional responsiveness, 
and in their mutual cooperation. There is but one 
song, viz: that of "the Seraphim," in which all the 
choristers of the universe join. 

"Through all the compass of the notes it ran, 
The diapason closing deep in man." 

If we make a careful and scientific study of the 
forces, laws and processes of nature, in her vast ex- 
panse and great variety, we behold a reaction, or a 
twofoldness of action in almost everything. In the 
world of physical forces we observe sound and the 
echo thereof; absorption and dissipation; radiation 
and reflection; repulsion and attraction; centripetal 
and centrifugal direction; involution and evolution; 
decomposition into elements and recomposition into 
organisms, especially of the higher vegetable and ani- 
mal. In these there is a marvelous illustration of the 
truth of the proposition now before us. Take the grow- 
ing tree. How the life flows out from the heart and 
up in the sap until the leaves and fruit appear; and as 
the sap-life returns again from the surface to the center, 
from the branches toward the roots, the leaves 
and the fruit cast themselves down at the base of the 
trunk in the unconscious antiphons of gratitude. Take 
also the living human organism so wonderfully and 
yet so purposely framed and constituted. How the 
life in the arterial blood flows out from the heart to 
every capillary in every member, and then back again 
through the venous channels to the place of beginning, 
as if to bear back to its source some resemblance of 
gratitude for benefits received. 



266 The Mercersburg Theology. 



What has just been said of the responsiveness in na- 
ture is equally true of the supernatural, acting and re- 
acting in the constitution of the heavenly world, em- 
bodied in the church and permitted to some extent 
to manifest itself in the observance of the church year. 
Christianity does not consist exclusively in what God 
has done and is doing for us ; neither is it merely what 
we do for him. The two are joined together in the 
holy bonds of everlasting wedlock. The objective and 
the subjective in the religion of Jesus Christ comple- 
ment each other in the union of one organic and com- 
prehensive whole. Hence the grand and universal 
antiphon, sounding out and resounding between heaven 
and earth and through the movement and counter- 
movement indicated and perpetuated in the proper 
use of the ecclesiastical calendar, may be regarded as 
the archetype of all true antiphonal service in the 
christian sanctuary. There is room for the responsive 
in the services of the church because earth was intended 
to be responsive to heaven, because the finite is respon- 
sive to the infinite, and because man can never rest 
until the human heart throbs itself back to the bosom 
of God. Let the angels of grace continue to come 
down and the messengers of gratitude continue to as- 
cend through the mediation of the Son of man. John 
i: 51. 

Mercersburg cultus assumes that true worship makes 
or leaves room for responses. Much of Old Testa- 
ment worship was prevailingly of this type. The in- 
spired Psalms were a part of the ritual of the Hebrews. 
Here as elsewhere we find their sacred antiphons. In 
their best devotions, "deep answereth unto deep." 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



267 



These confessions, prayers, and hymns of praise are 
generally in the responsive form. Especially is it true 
of the 148th Psalm, which is one of the finest antiphonal 
contributions ever added to the volume of sacred lit- 
erature. So in the early or ancient christian church. 
Simple, though somewhat seemingly monotonous, 
chants meet us as we retrace the history of the middle 
ages. The Ambrosian hymn and the Gregorian chants 
come echoing down the aisle of Christendom's great 
history. One sad defect in the Roman Catholic Church 
before the Reformation, and one great need for the 
Reformation, was that the people were allowed but 
little part in the worship of the sanctuary. The Ref- 
ormation began to restore these inalienable rights of 
the laity. When evangelical truth reopened her mighty 
thunders from the written word, the emancipated chil- 
dren of the truth, the laity of the church, opened their 
responsive lips: — ''Let the people praise Thee, God; 
let all the people praise Thee." 

In the advocacy and defense of the responsive ele- 
ment in liturgical worship, Mercersburg cultus was 
met by the plausible objection against the use of forms 
in prayer. This objection was urged upon the assumed 
tenability of the position that forms hamper rather 
than help the soul that would worship in spirit and in 
truth. Mercersburg replied that there should be the 
greatest possible quantity and highest possible quality 
of freedom in all christian worship, but raised the ques- 
tion as to what constitutes true freedom in the worship- 
er. Is it for an individual to follow his own whimsical 
feeling and fancy? Is not such action in danger of 
becoming arbitrary in its demands, and enslaving in 



268 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



its effects? The freedom of the individual is his priv- 
ilege and power to act according to the law of his nor- 
mal being, even as that is governed "by the law of the 
spirit of life in Christ Jesus," which alone makes him 
free from the law of caprice. It is one of the laws of the 
normal human being that no man liveth unto himself, 
or by himself; and as christian worship is essential 
to normal human being, no man can attain to his nor- 
mal estate except as he conforms to this higher law. 
To be a christian a man must live in the communion 
of saints, give alms in the communion of charity, and 
pray in the communion of worship. In such commun- 
ion there is freedom. Out of it there is bondage to the 
tyranny of false individuality. We read in the Bible 
of but one man who "prayed thus with himself," and 
he was an unjustified Pharisee. 

Mercersburg cultus is furthermore consistent with 
itself in its claims and concessions, that there are times 
and circumstances in which the human spirit moves 
freely with intercessions too deep to find utterance in 
strictly liturgical forms. There are times and con- 
ditions when prayer, according to its own law acting 
in harmony with God's more general law, expresses 
itself in 

The simplest form of speech 
That infant lips can try. 

It does not, it cannot wait for those 

Sublimer strains 
That reach the Majesty on high. 

The scriptures, as well as the entires history of divine 
worship, abound in such pious ejaculations. Job 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



269 



prayed : " Oh that thou wouldst hide me in the grave. " 
David said: "0 my God, my soul is cast down within 
me." Daniel prayed: "Oh Lord, hear; Oh Lord, for- 
give ; Oh Lord, do. " Jonah did not have his liturgy with 
him when he cried "out of the belly of hell, " and learn- 
ed that "Salvation is of the Lord." And St. Paul, 
though he insisted upon the importance of "holding 
fast to the form of sound words," was probably obliged 
to draw upon the vocabulary of his private order of 
worship before he could prevail upon divine grace to 
extract the thorn from his flesh. 

It should always be remembered, however, that the 
knowledge, power, grace and elegance placed at our 
command in composing impromptu prayers are largely 
the fruits of our sympathy with the use of sound lit- 
urgical forms. The ejaculatory prayers already quoted 
from the Old and New Testaments do not show any 
abrupt departure from scriptural and old liturgical 
phraseology. Many of the short prayers of our Lord, 
as well as many of his devout sayings, were in the lang- 
uage of the Hebrew ritual. His last petition on the 
cross was in the language of the fifth verse of the thirty- 
first Psalm. It can furthermore be shown that the 
language of the Lord's prayer was nearly if not all 
drawn from Old Testament phraseology. And cer- 
tainly the disciple is not now above his Master. If 
Jesus found liturgical enrichment in a proper familiar- 
ity with sacred forms of speech, is it not possible for 
us to be benefited by following his footsteps in seeking 
after and holding fast to the form of sound words? 
By so doing we will find our souls developing along 
better lines of extemporanrous prayer. On the other 



270 The Mercersburg Theology. 



hand the minister, or the man who is too smart and 
separatists to learn from the accumulated wealth of 
a devout past, will find himself dwarfed and deformed 
in his own bungled individuality. 

The Mercersburg school of christian cultus holds 
and teaches that liturgical worship is not the same as 
ritualistic performances. True liturgical service is 
of, for and by the people. Ritualism deals primarily 
in religious ceremonials rendered at, to and before the 
people, and often for the purpose of calling forth their 
admiration, rather than their devotion. Had the above 
distinctions been clearly made and kept in view there 
would have been less confusion in the Reformed Church 
during the last half century of her history in this coun- 
try. Mercersburg cultus is well designed for, and aims 
to promote that worship in the beauty of holiness in 
which all the people are challenged and permitted to 
have part. That which is really beautiful in itself 
needs no outward adornment. It is for all, opens the 
door to all, and makes it possible for all to have part. 
It secures the freedom of the child in the very bosom 
of the mother's fostering care and parental authority. 
It is sublime in its simplicity and simple in its sublim- 
ity. 

Neither does the general order of worship incorpor- 
ated in and represented by the Revised Liturgy pretend 
to be constitutionally similar to anything found in 
either pre-or post-Reformation literature. Dr. Nevin 
was very candid in his statement upon that point. 
He showed his sincerity of soul and purity of purpose 
in his efforts to have it distinctly understood on the 
part of its opponents that the Order of Worship was 



The Mercersburg Theology. 271 



designed as an advance upon anything previously 
given to the church. It was sincerely offered as an 
outgrowth of Mercersburg theology. In the Mercers- 
burg Review, 1867, p. 24, he says: "Had the book 
been a mere pulpit liturgy, a collection of dry forms 
for the use of the minister in the usual style of such 
mechanical helps, it would have called forth no such 
virulent opposition. But it was something altogether 
different from that. It carried with it the spirit and 
power of a true altar liturgy; and in this character it 
was felt to involve, not simply a scheme of religious 
service, but a scheme also of religious thought and be- 
lief, materially at variance with preconceived opinion 
in certain quarters." 

The order does not incorporate the same pericopes, 
and just as they were included in any of the ancient 
lectionaria or collection of scriptural readings; neither 
are the more devotional forms just the same as those 
found in the Zurich, the Palatinate, or the Maier 
liturgies. It is something different in construction 
and use. It is the logical fruit harvested along th e 
general line of historical development in a living and 
growing church. Why indeed should not such fruit 
be expected from the garden of the Lord's house, in 
the form of liturgical enrichment, as well as from any 
other department in God's great diversified field of 
christological unfoldment, where ecclesiology and so- 
ciology and the entire sisterhood of christian sciences 
are cultivated toward their highest possible perfec- 
tion? 



LECTURE XV. 



Mercersburg Sociology. 

Sociology is among the last to take its place in the 
family circle of religious sciences. Its principle, how- 
ever, is as old as Adam's race. It was in the world, 
yet the world was slow to know it as a branch of science. 
Men were social beings before their social nature be- 
gan to make its ways known unto Moses and its acts 
unto the children of Israel. The vital principle or- 
dained of God to shape and govern the social relations 
of mankind was floating in the blood of the race long 
before Hesiod harped or Sappho sang. The Creator 
emphasized the importance of that principle when he 
announced that it was not good for man to be alone. 
Born in and with the human race, with the develop- 
ment of the race it has been coming down the aisle 
of the ages, and will continue to unfold itself until it 
becomes scientifically and practically conscious of 
itself in the universal brotherhood of man. 

The development of the true social idea has been one 
of the slowest movements in history. The social spirit 
did little more than vapor within the dormitory walls 
of a drowsy, dreamy world, until it was awakened as 
from a morbid state of respose by the French Revolu- 
tion, when political disquietude, domestic anxiety, 
and general social anarchy aroused it into a dawning 
consciousness and disconcert of action. The revolu- 

272 



The Mercersburg Theology. 273 

tionary tactics of Robespierre, the intolerable tyranny 
of aristocracy, and the terror of the guillotine, quicken- 
ed the conscience of the more considerate part of the 
public, until it found its representative in Saint Si- 
mon, who after an effort to reorganize society upon a 
more sociological basis, left the work to his disciple, 
August e Comte. In 1852 Comte wrote on various 
phases of sociology from a political standpoint until 
he had stirred the spasmodic French people into a new 
commotion. After that socialistic movement had 
largely spent its spasmodic force in France, it crossed 
the channel into England and found an advocate in 
Herbert Spencer who, in 1876, wrote as a social evol- 
utionist. During all these years the movement made 
slow progress. 

During the last half century the discovery of new 
elements in the social problem helped to accelerate 
the movement towards a more thorough and satis- 
factory solution. Among these elements were: 1st. 
A clearing of the conception and an enlargement of the 
scope of civil liberty. Magna Charta, though seven 
hundred years old, had never been able to assert 
its rights until transplanted from the old despotic 
soil of Europe to nourish in the more salubrious air 
of the North American Republic. 2nd. The Prot- 
estant apprehension of religious freedom. Protestant- 
ism, as enjoying and exercising its chartered rights 
in America, helped to deepen the popular conviction 
that all men have an inalienable right to the tree of 
life, liberty and happiness, prophetic of the fact that 
only when this right is generally claimed, asserted, 
and conceded, can the leaves of the tree, standing in 
18 



274 The Mercersburg Theology. 



the midst of the social paradise of God, be successfully- 
applied for the healing of the nations. 3rd. The gen- 
eral spread of evangelical Christianity enlarged the 
conception that all men were alike dear to a common 
Father, and that consequently all are to be considered 
free and equal in the rights of a common brotherhood. 
4th. The rise of Mercersburg Christology in the mid- 
dle of the last century, with its Christocentric prin- 
ciple of differences in equality, and unity in diversity. 
This distinctive school of thought began to teach, as 
never taught before, in the same scientific sense, that 
in Jesus Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbar- 
ian nor Scythian, bond nor free, pauper nor prince, 
but that Christ as the generic man is all and in all. 
5th. This new mode of apprehending the old central 
truth of the ethical and social universe has greatly 
helped to deepen the growing consciousness of the 
intrinsic dignity of human personality, the consequent 
duty of self respect, and the glorious destiny of God's 
true nobleman. 

Consequent upon the discovery of these additional 
elements in the social problem and of these new agents 
at work in its solution, sociology, as an advancing 
science, has made progress in the right direction. Bet- 
ter still, it has changed its base of operations. The 
present trend of its more hopeful progress is toward 
the christocentric principle as first distinctive^, though 
not, as to its details, announced by the Mercersburg 
school of thought. It is only of recent date that it 
was, as such, made a distinct feature in the course of 
study in Franklin and Marshall College and in the 
Theological Seminary located at Lancaster, Pa., as in 



The Mercersburg Theology. 275 



the line of succession to Mercersburg College, where 
the seeds of Christian Sociology were sown by Dr. 
Frederick Augustus Ranch and Dr. John W. Nevin, 
while Comte and Spencer were projecting the shadows 
of their illusory humanitarian dreams into the dark- 
ness of general social chaos. 

Dr. Rauch already in 1840 wrote:* " The only power 
left to remove national enmity and produce peace 
among all nations is the Christian religion which teaches 
us to 'love all men.' * * * We may love every 
one whom we meet, and take an interest in every na- 
tion and tribe of mankind on the face of the earth. 
This is the spirit of Christ and ought to be the spirit 
of every man. The general possibility of loving all 
men becomes a duty, and this duty is the crown of all 
pathological inclinations. It commences with sexual 
love; it passes over to connubial love, and refines it- 
self still more in paternal and filial love, in fraternal, 
family and national love, until it appears in its high- 
est beauty in love to all men. The model of this love 
was Christ who, persecuted by all, by the Jews, and 
the Romans and Greeks, surrounded by malice, vol- 
uptuousness, faithlessness, standing alone in the midst 
of enemies, loved all and hated none." If Dr. Rauch 
could write in that vien as a mental philosopher, what 
rich truths might have dropped from his pen if he had 
lived to complete his contemplated work on ethics, 
as a stepping-stone into the more holy temple of social 
philosophy. 

Although Dr. John W. Nevin wrote very little, bear- 
ing directly or immediately on sociology as a science, 

* Rauch's Psychology, p. 331. 



276 The Mercersburg Theology. 



the christo centric power in the world by virtue of the 
incarnation, was, under his view, the governing prin- 
ciple in and over all the relations of social life. This 
is seen in the background, in the lines, and between 
the lines, of all his writings which bear even remotely 
upon the law of family life, the church, the state, and 
society in general. 

Dr. Theodore Apple, Prof, in Franklin College, wrote: 
"The true principle of social science and social progress 
is to be found in Christianity. It exists there not as 
an opinion, a speculation, or an abstraction; but as a 
fact, a power, in the person of Christ, which serves 
not only as a directory or guide to human progress, 
but as a new force brought to bear on history, in all 
respects, comprehensive enough and sufficient of it- 
self to give society the needed impluse in the right di- 
rection.* 

Prof. Thomas G. Apple, D.D., of the Theological 
Seminary at Lancaster, Pa., in his Introduction to the 
Study of Ethics, says: "As we treat ethics in its social 
aspect as well as related to the individual, it under- 
lies all departments of social science, the ethical con- 
stitution of social economy, in the family, the state 
and society generally. * * * Especially does its 
importance appear in the general subject of Sociology, 
which is coming to be studied in a scientific form more 
than formerly."* 

Rev. A. S. Weber, D.D., in his Jesus Christ the Great 
Reformer, wrote: "Witness, moreover, the benign 
power exerted by Christ and his teaching upon the 
relations subsisting between man and man. When 

* Mercersburg Review, 1870, p. 255. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 277 

Jesus was born, vast multitudes were in the bondage 
of slavery. Upon these the haughty temper of their 
masters perpetrated terrible cruelties. Behold now 
what Christ has wrought! The legal and social status 
of these multitudes has been changed. The lofty wall 
which seemed strong enough for all ages to separate 
the classes, has yielded to the leveling, equalizing power 
of the Gospel. * * * And so his reforming work 
goes constantly forward. It runs like a streak of life 
and glory through the ages. What he undertook is 
not yet fully accomplished. * * * Christ must 
continue his reforming work still further before the 
evolution of history shall result in perfected society. 
The past of this process is full of hope and promise for 
the future. His sovereign rule and authority will ul- 
timately find universal acknowledgment, and there in 
the new earth and new heaven wherein dwelleth right- 
eousness, men shall be like Christ, pure in holiness, 
vital with love, and his reforming work will be fully 
realized."! 

The Rev. A. T. G. Apple, now Prof, in Franklin and 
Marshall College, in his good paper on Christianity and 
the Present Industrial Order, when touching on the 
border-land of sociology, says: " Christianity will not 
join with unbelieving socialism in glorifying present 
well-being as the only thing with which we have to do, 
and it refuses to cease intoning its messages of another 
world where there are treasures to lay up; but it does 
not follow that because it rejects unbelieving social- 
ism, it does not believe in and teach Christian social- 

* Reformed Quarterly, 1890, p. 16. 

t Reformed Quarterly, 1892, pp. 404, 406. 



27$ 



The Mercebsbotg Theology. 



ism, in which all creature comforts have their proper 
places, sanitation, ample remuneration of toil, sufficient 
healthful recreation, the comforts of science and the 
joys of art — in short all the best things of civilisation 
and refinement. * * * And here more than any 
where else Christianity goes beyond its teachings in 
that it furnishes not only the diagnosis but the cure. 
It says with the voice of divine authority that the ex- 
ample of the great Founder must become the rule of 
every life. Not only are men to folio™ this example 
in finding a modus vivendi with one another, in found- 
ing the fraternal community, or in their attitude toward 
worldly good; but they are to follow the example of 
Christ in the sublime self-renunciation in which he was 
willing to make the supreme venture of faith and love 
when he lived according to what he saw to be right 
in the face of the world's sin. without waiting for men 
to go along with him."* 

Yet, although this Christo-social sentiment was quite 
generally entertained and expressed among the teach- 
ers, writers and scholarly adherents of the Mercers- 
burg school, there had been no effort, made before about 
the last of the nineteenth century to produce anything 
like a system of sociological science. About that time 
Dr. v'illiam Rupp. Professor of Practical Theology in 
the Theological Seminary at Lancaster, began the prep- 
aration and delivery of A Course of Lectures on Socio- 
logy. As a theologian, philosopher and a close student 
of current history in the political and industrial world, 
he was well fitted to undertake the task. The manu- 
scripts of those lectures are well worthy of a place they 

* Reformed Church Review, 1905, pp. 192, 193. 



The Mercersbueg Theology. 279 



now occupy along side of the unpublished works of 
Dr. Henry Harbaugh on Dogmatic and Practical Theol- 
ogy in the Historical Museum at Lancaster, Pa. 

In the introduction to his Christian Sociology, Dr. 
Rupp limits himself to the proper scope of his under- 
taking as follows: "What we propose to do in this 
course of lectures is not to present a complete science 
of human society. That would be a task far beyond 
our ability. And the accomplishment of it would 
also surpass the limits of our time. In fact, such a 
treatment of our subject would require many volumes; 
for it would have to embrace an account of almost 
everything that is of interest and importance in the 
life of man upon the earth. Nor do we propose to 
present a treatise on social ethics. Such a treatise in 
a complete and systematic form would likewise trans- 
cend the limits of our time, even if we had the ability 
to produce it. A treatise on social ethics would have 
to embrace a discussion, in the light of ethical prin- 
ciples, of all the relations and functions in society." 

Dr. Rupp's treatise assumes first of all that society 
exists, and that it needs neither construction nor re- 
construction in any sense that would make it answer- 
able to some idea other than that after which it is to 
be patterned, as to its constituent elements, functions 
and eternally ordained destiny. He would not at- 
tempt to reorganize humanity by legislation or other- 
wise. Humanity is an organization, or rather a real 
concrete organism, which can never be changed either 
as to the substance of its being or the laws of its nor- 
mal existence. The only radical change that human 
society needs, and the only transformation that hu- 



2S0 The Mercersburg Theology. 



manity can undergo, is a metamorphosis wrought by 
the radical elimination therefrom of the foreign ele- 
ment of sin. which, however, is no essential part there- 
of. This can be rooted out neither by reorganiza- 
tion nor by reformation; but by that supernatural pow- 
er of regeneration, made possible by the great mystery 
of Godliness, God manifest in the flesh. 

Dr. Rupp's limitation of his treatise to a narrow 
margin of space left no room in his very valuable course 
of lectures to notice the growing number of supernum- 
erary organizations in the general constitution of the 
social world. Had he been spared to enlarge his work, 
he doubtless would have noticed the fact that society 
is becoming overburdened with a multiplicity and 
multiformity of organizations, and that the church 
especially is suffering at this time with a super- 
abundance of orders and organizations. They range 
from the church-guild to the cradle roll. In all can- 
dor, it is submitted whether pure and simple chris- 
tian Sociology does not call for a halt in this modern 
excess of riot. To use the language of Prof. A. V. 
Hiester, in his introductory article on Cotemporary 
Sociology. '''These are eddies and cross-currents that 
c o nf use a nd misle a d . " * 

There are also organizations in the world's general 
social system more directly under the reigning power 
of sin and its consequent hallucinations. These can- 
not for one moment be tolerated by the intelligent 
advocates of sane and sound socialism. Communism, 
anarchism and nihilism are very hard to cure, except 
in the chair of electrocution or the madhouse. These 



* Reformed Church Renew, 190S, p. 95. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 281 



are described by our lecturer as follows: "The com- 
munist believes that the appropriation of any part 
of the products of nature or of labor by the individual 
is a violation of the divine law of society, and that 
it will not be possible for society to be in a state of well- 
being until this violation shall have ceased. The rem- 
edy which communism proposes for the ills of society, 
then, is exceedingly radical and drastic. It contem- 
plates nothing less than the subversion of the exist- 
ing social order, and the subsequent erection of a new 
social structure. Nihilism and anarchism propose to 
be simply preparations for the new communistic so- 
ciety. They propose to tear down the present indi- 
vidualistic state in order to make room for the new 
socialistic state." * * * " Now, against this com- 
munist scheme it may be said, in the first place, that it 
is impracticable. It may look well enough in romance, 
but it is totally unsuited to the reality of the world. 
It is not without reason, therefore, that the communistic 
program has so often been advocated in fiction. Uto- 
pia may look well as an ideal social picture, but Uto- 
pia is nowhere. The picture never has been and never 
can be realized. " 

Mercersburg Sociology is somewhat noted for the 
emphasis it lays upon the importance of the institu- 
tions which, while they are ordained of God, neverthe- 
less ground themselves in the comprehensive social 
organism of humanity. These are the family, the 
state and the church. The first two of these differ 
from the last, in that they spring from the general social 
system of the world, while the latter partakes more of 
the nature of the supernatural, and serves more directly 



282 The Mercersburg Theology. 



in the solution of the problem of the moral universe. 

The family is not held to be divine in the same sense 
that that attribute is predicable of the church. As 
one of "the subordinate spheres into which humanity 
suborganizes itself" the family has prominent posi- 
tion in all sound and comprehensive treatises on sociol- 
ogy. "It is a divine institution in the sense that hu- 
man nature is so constituted in virtue of its divine 
creation that it is a necessary consequence of human- 
ity's evolution." "The monogamous family is in ac- 
cordance with the divine idea of human life." The 
end of the family is the propagation and moral devel- 
opment of the race in the most normal and sanitary 
way possible under the dominion of sin. Occupying 
such a position, the family is the cradle of social sanc- 
tity, the gem of social beauty, and the Gibraltar of 
social strength. 

Our lecturer defines the State as follows: "Gov- 
ernment is essentially a divine institution. But it 
is divine not in the sense of being an immediate divine 
establishment, but in the sense of being a necessary 
growth on the soil of human nature as God originally 
constituted it. God has so constituted human nature 
that in its historical development it must necessarily 
give rise to the constitution of the State and to the 
formation of government. Government might, there- 
fore, be said to be a human institution at the same time 
that it is divine. And St. Peter, in fact, uses language 
which implies this idea. "Be subject," he says, "to 
every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. " 1 Peter, 
ii: 13. "Man can be man only in society. The in- 
dividual can develop his powers of body and mind 



The Mercersburg Theology. 283 



and be what the idea of mankind requires, only in con- 
nection with other individuals joined together in an 
organic whole by some common bond. The form of 
that bond is the State; and the organizing principle 
is the social instinct which is a part of the constitution 
of human nature. " 

From this standpoint our sociologist institutes an 
inquiry into the functions and duties of the state, to 
give either regulation or remedy in the matters of 
social, physical and moral well-being of the people, 
sanitation, monopolies, capital and labor, popular edu- 
cation, taxation, tariff, temperance, predatory wealth, 
and pinching poverty. A few samples quoted from 
his lectures on the general subject will suffice to give a 
general idea of his views as to the state's duty to the 
individual members thereof. 

On the functions of the State in general: "It is 
the function of the state positively to care for the phys- 
ical and moral well-being of the people; and to this 
end it should perform any offices which the people 
cannot so well perform in their individual capacity. 
The state exists not merely for the purpose of afford- 
ing a theatre on which the people may work out their 
happiness by their individual effort, but for the pur- 
pose of securing combined effort in the attainment of 
ends which would be otherwise unattainable. It is 
the duty of the government not merely to protect the 
life, liberty and property of the citizen, but to assist 
the citizen himself in developing to the utmost the 
capabilities of his manhood. It is the duty of the 
government accordingly to promote industry, to foster 
trade, to advance science and art, to cultivate moral- 



284 The Mercersburg Theology. 

ity and religion, in a word, to do everything for the 
well-being of the people, which the people in their 
individual capacity could either not do at all, or which 
they could do only with difficulty/ 7 

On education: "It is the state's business, even 
from an economic point of view, to see that its chil- 
dren receive a sufficient degree of education to enable 
them to enter on equal terms upon the struggle of life. 
And it is one of the hopeful signs of the times that 
this truth is now generally admitted. " 

On temperance: 1. " Temperance is a virtue, and 
as such it depends upon individual volition and choice. 
No man could be said to be temperate in the true chris- 
tian sense who would not be able to control his appe- 
tite even when surrounded by firkins of wine. And 
this ability of his self-control inheres in the will, sup- 
ported and strengthened by christian grace. 2. In- 
temperance has its inciting cause in physical condi- 
tions which tend to induce a morbid activity of the 
nerves, and cannot be removed so long as these con- 
ditions continue. If the moral will of all individuals 
were perfect in development and strength, they would 
be superior to the influence of such external conditions; 
but in the majority of men this is not the case; and 
hence in order to reduce the amount of intemperance, 
these conditions must be changed. This is the truth 
upon which the sociologist must lay stress. Society 
cannot afford to wait until all men have become chris- 
tians capable of self-control, before making efforts to 
rid itself from the curse of intemperance. 3. Neither 
moral suasion nor prohibition will avail much toward 
abating the evil of intemperance, so long as the pres- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 285 



ent social and economic conditions are allowed to re- 
main. As long as there is domestic infelicity, as long 
as there is poverty, and men are forced to over-ex- 
ertion and privation, and as long as men are born with 
diseased and debilitated nerves, so long there will be 
intemperate indulgence in stimulants. If it were not 
wine or beer, it would be opium or one of the many 
perparations of human ingenuity for the purpose of 
producing the same effect. The socialist is bound to 
regard intemperance in the light of a symptom of the 
mal-organization of society which will yield of itself 
when society shall have been better organized. Mean- 
while, however, the sociologist would not discourage, 
but rather encourage any efforts to reduce the amount 
of intemperance by religious and moral influence, as 
well as by legal means." 

The last paragraph quoted from Dr. Rupp on tem- 
perance and the means by which the cause may be 
made to triumph in complete success, indicates quite 
clearly the position of Mercersburg Sociology in the 
matter of modern attempts at general social reform. 
It shows an awakening conviction that the power of 
the Gospel is an absolute necessity to the thorough and 
satisfactory solution of the world's social, ethical and 
religious problem, that man's misery cannot be re- 
dressed and his manhood fully developed until in re- 
sponse to the crying wants of his nature and the na- 
ture of his wants, his Maker sends him help and health 
out of Zion. Ps. cxxviii: 5. Only when the New Jer- 
usalem is more generally seen as the perfection of so- 
cial beauty, will the Gospel become the power of God 



286 The Mercersburg Theology. 



unto all forms of salvation required to make man every 
whit whole. 

The physicians who are now treating the mere sym- 
toms of the malady in the social system, instead of 
applying the requisite remedy to the root of the dis- 
ease, must yet come to recognize the holy catholic 
church as the bearer of the Gospel-balm, before their 
poor paralytic patients can take up their beds and walk 
in all the vigor and joy of a radical cure and permanent 
convalescence. The entire social organism must find 
its help and health in organized Christianity. The 
heavenly world must pour a supernatural power of 
regenerative life-blood into the whole fallen race. "It 
is the order of things in heaven reaching down into 
the condition of things on earth that serves to impart 
to these any significance they can ever have in the 
way of resemblance to heavenly things." (Nevin). 
In this way only can the "communion of saints" in 
the church develop itself into the broader social com- 
munity of citizens in the state, and thus enlarge the 
answer to the 55th Question of the old ecumenical 
confession "that each one must feel himself bound to 
use his gifts, readily and cheerfully, for the advantage 
and welfare of all other members." When the light 
of that happy day shall dawn upon the world "the 
mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing, 
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands," 
because, "instead of the thorn shall come up the fir- 
tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle- 
tree ; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, and for an 
everlasting sign that shall not be cut off." 



LECTURE XVI. 



Mercersburg Escha.tology. 

Eschatology treats of the events which are regarded 
as final in the history of the world. - It has to do with 
the completion of the purpose of God in creation, prov- 
idence, redemption, and the restitution of all sublun- 
ary things. These last things are necessarily curtained 
behind the veil not easily penetrated by the natural 
powers of the finite mind. "The Resurrection of the 
Body" and "The Life Everlasting/' being the last 
articles in th e creed, and at the close of thegreat drama 
of man's present mode of existence, are e vents of pro- 
phecy which must wait for more light as to the manner 
of their exact realization. Especially must the science 
of psychology be more fully developed and perfected 
before it can shed its best rays of light upon the ques- 
tions as to "how are the dead raised up?" "with what 
body do they come?" and as to how "cometh the end 
when he shall have delivered the kingdom to God, even 
the Father," * * * "that God may be all in all. " 

Were the Mercersburg theology an expression of a 
school of mere speculative thought, its apostles would 
long since have answered all questions pertaining to 
the last things in such a way as to be entirely satis- 
factory to themselves. But it is not a school of ven- 
turesome speculation. It makes use of science, and 
emphasizes the importance of making proper use of 

287 



288 The Mercersburg Theology. 



the highest powers of human reason, yet in things 
which are primarily matters of revelation it is guided 
ty that "more sure word of prophecy given by inspi- 
ration of God," as a lamp and heavenly light to all 
proper investigations into the deep and mysterious 
things of the infinite mind. This school of theology 
is also to be distinguished from some others in that 
it holds Jesus Christ to be the key that unlocks the 
sanctuary of the inspired Book, and opens its meaning 
with a christological interpretation of things already 
written, as well as affording a logical anticipation of 
things that must be hereafter. 

Unchristological doctrines concerning the last things 
are too generally constructed upon the assumption 
that God has decreed a time in which he will come to 
his creation to judge the world, without any reference 
to the questions now passing through the process of 
solution in its history; or that he will come in conse- 
quence of his impatience with the growing perversity 
of mankind; or that he will come and put an end to 
this present order of things, when the number of the 
elect has been gathered home and safely thronged on 
Zion's heavenly hill; or when the economy of nature 
has grown so old with age as to be ripe for a constitu- 
tional collapse under the weight of its own decrepi- 
tude; or when in accordance with some supralapsar- 
ian fiat the physical part of the universe shall be swept 
out of existence by a general cataclysm, as though 
"the heavens being on fire," are to pass through a 
chemical process of physical dissolution and return 
either to their primary elements or into absolute an- 
nihilation. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 289 

Such seems to have been the prevailing view of es- 
chatology one hundred years ago when Pollock wrote 
his Course of Time. (See Book VI.) 

Along these general lines of eschatological thinking, 
whether poetically or prosaically conceived and ex- 
pressed, we find the theories of the last things coming 
down through the nineteenth century befogged in ab- 
stract conceptions of divine power. Dr. John Dick, 
the Scotch theologian, published his lectures some sev- 
enty years ago, and Dr. J. J. Van Oosterzee of Utrecht 
continued, a quarter of a century later, in a somewhat 
similar, though along a less mechanical line of argu- 
ment, in their advocacy and defence of an eschatology 
which is now beginning to retire before the rising sun 
of a better theology. Dr. Dick says:* "The power 
of God is able to execute the purpose of his will. Why 
should it seem an incredible thing that God should 
raise the dead? is a question which may put to si- 
lence all infidel objectors. As the event does not im- 
ply a contradiction, it is possible, and may therefore 
be effected by that power to which no limits can be 
assigned. He who made all things out of nothing can 
unquestionably restore any portion of matter to the 
form and organization which he gave it at first. If 
he fashioned the human body out of dust, it would be 
absurd to suppose that there is any greater difficulty 
in raising it from the dust again. * * * There 
will be a visible appearance of Jesus Christ, who will 
come with great power and glory, and will erect his 
throne in the clouds. His ministers will be the angels, 

* Dick's Theology. Vol. II, pp. 315, 321. 
19 



290 The Mercersburg Theology. 



who will be sent forth to gather his elect together from 
all parts of the earth in which they are dwelling, or in 
which their bodies are deposited. Saints and sinners 
are now mingled together in the common offices of 
life; but then they will be parted forever." 

Dr. Van Oosterzee, in his Christian Dogmatics, Vol. 
II, pp. 787, 802, indicates his position as follows: "The 
possibility of such a resurrection of the body is cer- 
tainly conceivable only from the christian-theistic 
standpoint, and starts the same difficulties, but has 
also the same reasons in its favor as that of every mir- 
acle of creation or new-creation in every domain of 
life. From the materialistic point of view, even from 
a one-sided spiritualistic point of view, of course no 
bodily resurrection is conceivable; but on the other 
side we are here, least of all, insensible to the force of 
the well known words of Ottinger, which speak of "a 
bodily form" as "the end of all the ways of God." 
It is not even necessary here to think of a purely 
mechanical reunion of that which has been separated 
at death, if with Paul we have found the deeper ground 
even for the quickening of the body, in the spiritual 
principle of the life in Christ. We may perhaps sup- 
pose that an invisible and indestructible germ of the 
future body dwells already in the present, and that 
precisely therein is placed the guarantee of the iden- 
tity of the two. " 

In quoting from the above mentioned two distin- 
guished divines of the last century we notice quite a 
march of progress from Scotland to Holland, and yet 
there is a considerable christological difference and 
distance between Utrecht and Mercersburg. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 291 



Dr. Emanuel V. Gerhart approaches the subject of 
the resurrection of the dead from a different direction, 
and conducts its discussion along a very different line 
of argument. His principle of resurrection power is 
in the person of Immanuel, not " enthroned in the 
clouds," as Dr. Dick locates him, but so vitally iden- 
tified with humanity in virtue of the incarnation, that 
when he is "lifted up" his elevation will in some sense 
draw after him "all men" into the general realm that 
lies beyond the present abnormal and consequent 
mortal state of humanity. In agreement with this 
conception and along this more logical and christo- 
logical line of argument, Dr. Gerhart, in Book IX of 
his Christian Institutes, says: "The resurrection of 
Christ, not an abstract conception of God's omnipo- 
tence, is our only trustworthy guide in the endeavor 
to form some just conception of the resurrection in 
general. Speculative reflection on the article of the 
christian creed, which does not come nor can ever fall 
within the range of natural observation or ordinary 
experience, must be directed and shaped by the true 
type of the mystery." 

"If we reason, governed by this principle of thought, 
we are justified in believing that in the resurrection 
all men will not only pass from one domain of existence 
into another, but all will also live in the higher or the 
lower world in a form of being and of character spe- 
cifically other than that human organization which ap- 
pears on earth or subsists in hades, a constitution and 
a form which will certainly be consistent with personal 
identity, but as to the status and qualities of person- 
ality will nevertheless be diverse, the difference being 



292 The Mercersburg Theology. 



determined in the righteous by the law of the spirit 
of life in Christ Jesus, in the wicked by the develop- 
ment of the law of sin." 

Barring the bare possibility of a radical change of 
nature of all men in hades, which at this stage of the 
development of God's kingdom does not seem to be 
a rational conception, all self-determined human char- 
acters will make their entrance into the next world 
essentially the same in ethical qualities as in their exit 
from their present order and plane of existence. It 
may, therefore, be assumed that the " spiritual man" 
and the " natural man" will not undergo any change 
in the general resurrection, essentially or exactly the 
same in kind. It is not to be supposed that when St. 
Paul spoke of the "natural body" being raised a "spir- 
itual body," I Cor. xv, he meant to teach that the 
natural body of a man is the same as the natural man's 
body. As he was writing primarily to christians and 
of christians "sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to 
be saints" (Chap. I., verse ii), he evidently meant that 
in the case of such "sanctified" persons, God "giveth 
to every seed his own body," because Christ is al- 
ready so informed in such christians as to give to each 
body its own resurrection seed. This comforting 
assurance certainly does not apply to everybody in a 
mixed audience of believers and unbelievers, but to 
the "beloved brethren" whom he addressed in the 
last verse of that wonderful christological sermon. 

Mercersburg Eschatology, as applied to the general 
resurrection of the just and the unjust, has little sym- 
pathy with the theory, alluded to by Dr. John Dick 
in his theology, p. 317, of a "germ or seminal principle 



The Mercersburg Theology. 293 



in the human body, which is not destroyed by death; 
and which at the appointed time, will reproduce the 
body in a more excellent form than before, through the 
quickening influence of divine power." Neither does 
it "suppose," with Dr. J. J. Van Oosterzee, page 787 
of his Dogmatics, "that an invisible and indestruct- 
ible germ of a future body dwells already in the pre- 
sent." 

On the other hand Mercersburg Christology so ap- 
prehends the meaning and power of the incarnation 
of the Son of God as to see its virtue following human- 
ity down the dark stream and into the dark region of 
death, applying its healing balm to christian men in 
the hadean realm in such a way as to bridge over the 
dark chasm between the present and the future state 
of human being. Christo centric theology is not found 
wanting in the crossing of Jordan. It is as consistent 
in its claims as the incarnate mystery is continuous 
in its historic force, and the remedial kingdom of God 
persistent in its historical development. As the chris- 
tological method is the most logical way of conducting 
an approximately successful inquiry into the meaning 
of the world's history, so is the christological idea the 
only principle of correct inquiry into the manner in 
which that history will be consummated in the "Res- 
urrection of the Dead" and the "Life Everlasting." 
This method represents the planting of a germinal 
christian seed in congenial soil: "If the Spirit of him 
that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, 
he that raised up Jesus from the dead shall quicken 
also your mortal bodies through the spirit that dwell- 
eth in you." The spirit, however, does not bring his 



294 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



quickening influence to bear directly upon the body 
of the christian, but upon his personality, and through 
such personality upon the body, to recover it from death 
to the extent of whatever it contains essential to the 
perpetuation of personal identity. What is chris- 
tology but that scientific view of Christ's person which 
gives him the central position in the whole historic 
economy of human redemption, from the closing of the 
garden gates of Eden to the opening of the pearly por- 
tals of the New Jerusalem, for the ransomed of the 
Lord to return and come to the heavenly Zion with 
songs of everlasting joy upon their heads. 

As th,e second coming of the Personal One is the 
central fact around which will cluster all the events 
of the coming resurrection age, so the central inquiry 
into the dogma of the resurrection of the saints must 
be concerning his relation to their forthcoming, not 
primarily and directly his relation to the body or soul 
of the saint, but to the person of the sainted dead. 
The resurrection seed must be in the person in order 
to the restoration of the dead to their normal and glori- 
fied completion. St. Paul's philosophy was primarily 
interested in the resurrection of persons, rather than 
in the resurrection of muscles, bones and sinews. 

It is at least questionable whether the promised res- 
urrection, which animates our hopes of future olessed- 
ness, is predicable of the body, or more primarily of 
the person. The body is but seldom mentioned in 
those passages of the scriptures that treat of or refer 
to the resurrection. In most cases it is the resurrec- 
tion of or from the dead, or of the person who has passed 
into the intermediate state. It is true that the creed 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



295 



expresses faith "in the resurrection of the body" rather 
than in the resurrection of the dead, neither is Chris- 
tendom at variance with the confession of faith as 
expressed in Article XI of the creed. It must be re- 
membered, however, that the old Gnostic tendency to 
spiritualize everything pertaining to Christ's person 
and his work in the christian, was still in the church 
in those periods of her history when the creed was pass- 
ing through the gradual process of formulation, and 
that in order to hold fast to the great truth of the res- 
urrection of the dead, with all that it involves and im- 
plies, including what the Gnostic heresy denied, viz., 
the resurrection of the body, the church wisely em- 
phasized that side of the truth; and so it continues by 
toleration even unto this day. The time will probably 
come, however, when Christendom, assailed as it now 
is by the opposite tendency toward materialism, will 
be obliged to place the emphasis back to where the 
scriptures and true science will justify its location. 

Mercersburg Eschatology is not so much concerned 
about the question as to whether there be a germinal 
seed in the christian's body as it is with the question 
in christian psychology as to a germ-principle of life 
and immortality in the christian man's ransomed per- 
sonality. If in our persons, Christ is formed the hope, 
or germ-principle, of glory, the resurrection angel will 
have but little to do in completing his work of gather- 
ing the whole harvest of redeemed humanity into the 
garner of heavenly glory. Christ's resurrection is 
both the principle and the proof of our own resurrec- 
tion. As the generic man, he is the forerunner and 
first fruits of all redeemed humanity. His resurrec- 



296 The Mercersburg Theology. 



tion is the fruit of his victory. When Jesus cried with 
a loud voice it indicated "the greatness of his strength. " 
In that strength he entered the realm, extracted the 
sting, and exhausted the power of death. Having 
thus "abolished death/' he reached that turning point 
in his eventful history when "death had no more do- 
minion over him." Having captured captivity, he 
led it captive. Having spoiled principalities and power 
he made a show of them openly. (Col ii: 14). Having 
been confined as a willing captive in the city of the 
dead he arose in the midnight hour of human history, 
and, with more than Samsonian might, plucked up 
the pillars and carried away the gates of the hadean 
metropolis. No wonder that "our God has gone up 
with a shout!" No wonder that the apostles preached 
Jesus and the resurrection with such enthusiastic em- 
phasis! "It is Christ that died; yea, rather, is risen 
again." His resurrection and ascension were both of 
the fruit of his own victory over death and the assur- 
ance that we too shall "pass the crystal ports of light 
to dwell in endless bliss." 

Mercersburg theology, however, does not teach that 
all men who die in Adam shall be normally made alive 
in Christ. The limitation of saving benefits is with 
those who are in Christ, or with those who partake of 
his life as an antidote for sin and death. Others who 
will have rejected the antidote, or who did not have 
the disposition to receive it when offered, will still be 
found poisoned or diseased with that mortal malady; 
and, therefore, while between themselves and Christ 
there is a humanity in common, there will be some ele- 
ments which they will be found not to possess in com- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 297 



mon with the risen Lord — elements essential to a res- 
urrection unto moral health, consequent happiness 
and eternal glory. Christ, as the risen, ascended and 
glorified head of humanity, will, by virtue of the res- 
urrection-force going out from his person, draw all 
men unto himself. His relation to those who shall have 
partaken of his life as an antidote for sin and death, 
and in whom it shall have operated as a healing force, 
will be one of positive attraction. To such as will 
not have been benefited by this counteractant life- 
force of Immanuel, and who are found in Hades, as 
continued and consequently continuous sinners, will 
be resurrected to a continued state of self-condemna- 
tion under the continued force of death. The affin- 
ities found between life-forces and the attraction con- 
sequent thereupon involve the possibility of repul- 
sion. This possibility of repulsion will reach its ul- 
timate actualization in the peculiar character of the 
resurrection and rejection of the wicked. The Son 
of Man, by virtue of the common affinity between him- 
self and all memoers of the race, will gather "all na- 
tions" before the judgment seat, and by the force of 
repulsion will cause the wicked to "depart from" him. 

Mercersburg theology, as applied to the resurrec- 
tion mystery of eschatology, has not yet developed its 
christology into a satisfactory theory or doctrine. 
It has, however, turned its face toward the rising of 
that sun of more rational righteousness which will 
have a more consistent and scientfic healing in his 
wings. It is only an anticipation of history to pre- 
dict that there will soon be a much modified appre- 
hension of some things now conceded to be involved 



298 The Mercersburg Theology. 

in the Lord's second coming. It is even now held that 
the resurrection of the dead does not imply that there 
will be a restoration of all the material elements which 
at some time in life, or at the final dissolution, may 
have been incorporated and held together by the ebb- 
ing life-force of the individual. The first step toward 
a scientific solution of this question is to secure a clear 
and distinct conception as to what constitutes the body. 
It was the old orthodox idea that the resurrection 
body is the outward frame, composed of various ma- 
terial substances, and that it would be raised from the 
grave by some sort of synthetic process in miraculous 
chemistry. This section of the old theology is now 
fast passing away beyond the power of resurrection. 
It was born under the reign of a materialistic planet, 
and has managed to live through the past materialis- 
tic ages, but can no longer command the respect of 
thinking men, since the light of a more christocentric 
luminary has made its appearance in the scientific 
heavens. It has been weighed in God's great balance 
and found wanting. If theologians had not been blind 
to the existence of an unseen universe, the idea would 
never have been born. Besides, it is based upon the 
abstract power of omnipotence. We do not deny the 
unlimited power of God, and yet we cannot accept 
any "body of divinity" that has no organic concep- 
tion of truth. We admit that omnipotence might 
make a successful search after all the mummies in 
Egypt, and gather up all the original ingredients of 
men whose material bodies have been analyzed in the 
chemistry of fire, but if this is what the creed of Chris- 
tendom implies as essential to the resurrection of the 



The Mercersburg Theology. 299 



body, our faith needs a tonic of the most powerful 
sort. 

Whatever in the old conception of the resurrec- 
tion of the material of the body is now regarded as 
out of line with the better march of christological pro- 
gress, may be attributed to the retention in the faith 
of the church of some elements of the old Manichean 
heresy of dualism. It loses sight of the unifying prin- 
ciple of human personality. "A dualism," says Dr. 
Rauch, "that admits of two principles for one being, 
offers many difficulties, and the greatest is to unite 
those principles in a third." A river may originate 
in two fountains, but individual life cannot. And 
because life cannot be derived from different sources, 
neither can it be separated into different parts. 

We repeat, therefore, that whatever there is of a 
blessed or first resurrection for humanity depends not 
on some colossal stride of God's abstract omnipotence, 
but roots itself organically in the last Adam. It is 
in Christ, not merely as a fruit of his own personal 
victory over death, and his consequent ascension into 
the higher sphere of glorified humanity, but also 
and rather as a fountain of substantial sinless life for 
each individual, in organic union with him who is the 
" quickening spirit," and who begins, in our regenera- 
tion, the quickening process in our persons and will 
complete itself in our resurrection, as sanctified per- 
sons, until we are made every whit whole. We al- 
ready feel the resurrection near, as the earthly house 
of this tabernacle is being dissolved. Come, Lord Je- 
sus, come quickly! With patience we wait to be ab- 
sent from this tenement of clay, that we may be cloth- 



300 The Mercersburg Theology. 



ed upon with our house which is from heaven. Is not 
our heavenly house even now in the spiritual and or- 
ganic process of erection? 

The only question remaining to be touched upon is: 
when shall the last physical change take place in the 
history of each second-adamite? Down to this time, 
the weight of theological sentiment, as formulated in 
the confessions and taught in the divinity schools, 
has favored its postponement to some unknown fu- 
ture period, when the dethronement of death and the 
aggregate rising of the dead are to constitute the grand 
and final act in time's great theater. There is now, 
however, a gradual breaking away from all such in- 
terpretation of scripture. Many believe that the doc- 
trine never had any fellowship with the truth. As 
soon as an individual becomes a member of the second 
Adam, there is a beginning of the process by which 
"this mortal shall put on immortality." The more 
enlightened christian minds are beginning to rebel at 
the thought of any part of man's real being going down 
into the grave and sleeping away unnumbered years 
in the cheerless chambers of sepulchral solitude. 



LECTURE XVII. 



Mercersburg Eschatology — Concluded. 

In Lecture XVI an effort was made to explore the 
realm of eschatology so far as it includes the mystery 
of the resurrection. Observation was taken of the 
fact that Mercersburg theology has not yet sufficiently 
developed itself to enter the hadean realm, fully equip- 
ped for the complete unravelment of its mysteries. 
It, however, felt justified in announcing its belief that 
the central event in that closing period of the world's 
great history will be the Second Advent of Jesus Christ; 
that the truly christological idea is the principle of 
approximately successful inquiry after the last things, 
and the manner in which the prophetic utterances of 
history will be fulfilled; that one of the first fruits of 
the Second Advent will be the resurrection of the dead ; 
that the resurrection will not be brought about by any 
manifestation of the abstract power of omnipotence, 
but rather by a silent display of the concrete dynamic 
force brought into the organism of fallen humanity 
by virtue of the incarnation of him who by the as- 
sumption of such humanity became its resurrection 
and its life ; that the Personal One will be the mighty 
magnet drawing unto himself the persons of the saint- 
ed dead, and that consequentially their bodies wLl be 
restored in so far as shall be necessary to the perpet- 
uation of personal identity. 

301 



302 



The Mercersbtjrg Theology. 



"After death the judgment." The general judg- 
ment is not an article of faith, except as it stands re- 
lated to and is mentioned in the seventh article of the 
creed, as a cardinal truth consequential upon the Lord's 
second coming. As Jesus is the resurrection, so does 
he also involve in his theanthropic person the judicial 
necessity of judging "the world in righteous and his 
people with his truth." To him is committed all 
judgment, not by an authority from without, but be- 
cause "for this cause came he into the world that he 
might bear witness to the truth." He bears witness 
to the truth as something which can in no sense be 
disparted from his person. Hence the tremendous 
nature of the conflict between truth and error. Hence, 
too, the nature of his mission in the world is to bring 
not primarily peace but a sword. In this character 
he was foreseen by the inspired Psalmist. Ps. xlv: 3-4. 
"Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, most mighty, 
with thy glory and thy majesty. And in thy majesty 
ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and 
righteousness." Under this view judgment is now 
seen to be going on as the conflict rages and deepens 
between Christ and antichrist. "Now is the judg- 
ment of this world," now is the prince of this world 
in the process of excommunication. John xi: 31. 
"The general judgment is a fact, the force of which 
pervades the progress of Messianic revelation from the 
primeval promise onward through the ages."* 

This progressive judgment of the world by the his- 
toric Christ is not identical with, but yet inseparable 
from the coming of God's kingdom. That great truth 

* Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. II, p. 870. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



303 



of his coming kingdom is recognized as such in the 
first petition of our Lord's Prayer. Its position of 
precedence in the prayer corresponds with and indi- 
cates its primary importance among all the events in 
the history of the world, all the factors in the economy 
of man's redemption, and all the forces at work in 
time for the full glorification of God's ransomed people. 
It embraces in itself the power of a full answer to all 
the following petitions in that divine ritual. When 
the intelligent and consistent christian prays: u Thy 
kingdom come," he has reason to believe that the 
answer to that petition anticipates the answer to all 
that follows. He believes in his own heart and feels 
in his own consciousness that that kingdom is now com- 
ing with rising, spreading and prevailing power, and 
that the Lord is coming in his kingdom. Even the 
penitent thief had perception enough to recognize such 
an essential relation of Messianic immanence between 
the King and his kingdom. This view of the king- 
dom, as now in the process of its coming, is emphasized 
by all consistent Mercersburg christologians. They 
read it in every word and trace it between all the lines 
of their apostolic commission. "Lo, I am with you al- 
way even unto the end of the world." Their dis- 
cerning faith hears his stately stepping echoed from 
the corridors of the ages, feels the sweep of his power 
in the march of his progress, and bears witness to the 
fulfillment of his promises in the growing splendor of 
his Messianic glory. 

But what is now going on, or rather coming forward in 
the form of history, will reach a final epoch when Christ 
crowns his personal Messianic movements with the 



304 The Mercersburg Theology. 



more signal manifestation of himself in all the power 
and glory of his Second Advent. Connected with his 
second coming, and yet distinct therefrom, will be 
the judicial epoch of the world's history. "Then shall 
he sit upon the throne of his glory." His throne will 
not "be erected in clouds," as already quoted from 
Dr. Dick. He will rather bring his throne with him. 
He is now enthroned in Messianic power. That power 
will continue to be his throne. The Lamb is in the 
midst of the throne. Rev. iv: 6. Although its char- 
acter may be modified by either mercy or justice, ac- 
cording to the prevailing nature of the dispensation 
in which and for which it is primarily erected, or chang- 
ed, according to the direct purpose of the divine mind, 
from a throne of grace to a throne of glory, yet it can 
always in truth be said: "Thy throne O God, is for- 
ever and ever." Heb. i: 8. "The Son of man shall 
come in great power and glory," and "of his king- 
dom there shall be no end." 

That epoch in history is also even now the impend- 
ing crisis awaiting the closing of time's great drama. 
The crisis will be fully ripe when the prince of life and 
light will meet and vanquish the prince of death and 
darkness upon the world's great battle-field, and close 
forever the historic moral strife which is now being 
waged on this sin-polluted planet. At this point we 
can do no better than quote freely from the best Mer- 
cersburg authority, and the most standard orthodox 
treatise on Mercersburg Eschatology known to the 
writer. Dr. Emaunel Vogel Gerhart, in his Institu- 
tes of the Christian Religion, Vol. II, pp. 870, 871, says: 
"This antagonism implies the conflict of truth with 



The Mercersburg Theology. 305 



falsehood, of right with wrong, of Christ with Satan, 
a conflict which ultimately will reach a decisive crisis. 
That crisis will be the conclusion of the historic an- 
tagonism, the result of the spiritual war going on in 
the world since the apostasy of the angels. The or- 
iginal purpose of God in bringing the world into ex- 
istence will triumph, and the end which the moral 
battles of history have been anticipating will be ac- 
complished. This triumph will be the ripe fruit of 
all the processes, whether natural or ethical or judicial, 
which from the beginning has been growing from the 
living seed of righteousness, the immanent action of 
the Logos. Being the conclusion and culmination of 
all the judicial processes of man's history, the general 
judgment by this fact differs from God's antecedent 
judicial dealings. * * * All events of human 
history, whether sacred or profane, evince the pres- 
ence of moral and judicial forces. An unseen law is 
ever working with resistless might, which connects 
right doing with approval and blessing, and wrong 
doing with condemnation and misery, thus, amid 
fierce conflicts, announcing the eventual solution of 
the world problem. A spiritual eye only is needed to 
interpret the signs of coming judgment which the 
monuments of every battle-field have been predicting. " 

The cessation of this conflict will be the swallowing 
up of this historical antagonism in the final victory 
of God's kingdom over the principalities and powers 
of evil. It will include the abolition of mortality in 
God's moral heritage. "And there shall be no more 
death," for the former things will have passed away 



306 The Mercersburg Theology. 



in the achievement of a glorious triumph for the in- 
dividual christian.* 

As the life of the child is bound up in the life of the 
mother until the day of their mutual deliverance 
in birth-travail, so does the church, "the mother of 
us all," include in her final deliverance the deliv- 
erance of each and all of her spiritual children. The 
full emancipation of the whole kingdom of God im- 
plies the disenthrallment of each organic subject or 
individual part. The whole cannot be perfected with- 
out the perfection of each organic part, neither can 
any individual part become fully free and perfect with 
out the corresponding status of the whole. 

In agreement with the above truth it follows that 
the individual saint cannot be made perfect in the 
hour of his death. He goes into an intermediate state 
which cannot terminate until the whole ransomed 
church of God is rescued from the power of hades to 
become triumphant in the resurrection and judgment 
day. Even though the saint at his death should be 
immediately clothed upon with his house which is 
from heaven, his full consummation of redemption and 
bliss will be conditioned by the final victory awaiting 
the whole organism of redeemed humanity at the com- 
ing and in the kingdom of the Son of man when he 
comes to judge the quick and the dead. Furthermore, 
as the consummation of the individual subject of the 
kingdom cannot precede the consummation of the 
kingdom itself, so the consummation of neither can 
precede the coming of the King. 

The individual's final deliverance and full glorifica- 



* Christian Institutes, p. 885. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 307 



tion will, moreover, depend upon the fact that, being 
a loyal citizen of the kingdom, and a living member of 
the church, which is Christ's mystical body, and the 
embodiment of his kingdom, he is also a member of 
Christ, a branch of the true Vine by the power of the 
holy ghost through faith. Such faith being alive must 
needs make manifestation of itself in the unfolding 
of christian character and fruitage in good works. 
These good works will be emphasized and commended 
by the Judge himself. Math. xxv. The peculiar 
characteristic and intrinsic value of such works is that 
they are done unto him. Therefore the welcome plaud- 
it: "Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the king- 
dom" in all its ripeness and glory, the kingdom which 
has not only been prepared but also and rather de- 
veloped from the foundation of the world. 

As having a bearing upon the foregoing paragraph 
we quote further from Dr. Gerhart's Institutes of the 
Christian Religion, pp. 884, 885." As there are crises 
in the history of the kingdom, so there are peculiar 
crises in the history of the individual. Such a crisis 
is the epoch of natural death. The state of the be- 
liever in the intermediate realm may be spoken of as 
a judgment, a personal indication, a positive approval 
of his faith and character: but the judgment of ap- 
proval rests on the fact that he is a living member of 
the body of Christ. Being a member, he participates 
in the eternal life and the radical salvation which dis- 
tinguish Christ's mystical body." 

By parity of the reasoning employed in the fore- 
going paragraphs it may be shown that the future state 
of the wicked will for reverse reasons be the opposite 



308 The Mercersburg Theology. 



of that of the righteous. Abnormal human beings will 
"inherit" a kingdom not prepared for them, but one 
which they by a perverse use of their divine possibil- 
ities and powers have helped to develop for themselves. 
As vital holiness is the principle of salvation and hap- 
piness, so is sin the principle of damnation and misery. 
Holiness, having an ethical affinity for the fountain 
of life and purity in Christ, leads the righteous to choose 
and do the things that are pleasing unto him. On the 
other hand, sin, having an affinity for selfishness, leads 
the sinner to choose the contrary course. The wicked 
are simply left without salvation. Being without nor- 
mal life, they are left in a state of death. Without 
the true light, they remain in a state of darkness. 
Without moral health and with no remedy except 
that which they have already rejected, they cannot 
enter a state of convalescence. Without God in the 
world, they remain aliens from the commonwealth 
of God's spiritual Israel, and, so far as now known to 
us, they are without hope. "The second death is hell, 
called in the New Testament, Gehenna. Of Gehenna 
sin is the informing principle ; and by the constant ac- 
tion of the forces of sin Gehenna perpetuates itself 
from age to age. " (Dr. Gerhart's Institutes, p. 887.) 

Respecting the time and manner of the final judg- 
ment there is much room for conjecture and specula- 
tive opinion on the part of those who know more 
about that coming epoch in history than the Son of God 
and all the angels in heaven. Mark xiii: 32. Mercers- 
burg philosophy, however, is not primarily given to 
such speculation concerning the last deep things of 
God in the fulfillment of the plan of the ages. It fol- 



The Mercersburg Theology. 309 



lows neither ancient Chiliasm nor modern Adventism 
in their miserable attempts to horoscope the future; 
yet it is obliged to carry the Mercersburg system to 
completion. In so doing it aims to be consistent with 
itself as a whole. Such consistency requires that its 
views of the holy catholic church as the embodiment 
of God's kingdom in time and space should be continued 
along a logical line of reasoning until the final crisis 
and consummation of the kingdom is reached in the 
world's last epoch. Mercersburg ecclesiology knows 
not two churches, a visible and an invisible church, 
but One Holy Catholic Church, visible and invis- 
ible. So doubtless will the end be. There will be 
realities connected with the glorification of the church 
at the coming of the Son of man and the judgment- 
day too sacred and too prevailingly supernatural for 
the organ of human vision. On the other hand, al- 
though "the kingdom of God cometh not ordinarily 
by observation," there will doubtless be manifesta- 
tions so obvious as to command the observation of all 
discerning eyes. And yet there will probably not be 
many indifferent spectators present to gratify a mor- 
bid curiosity by looking in upon the proceedings of 
that great assize. 

Whatever may be the phenomena connected with 
the final judgment, the recording angel will place it 
high in the chancery of heaven, that time is to be no 
more; that the volume of history has been written; 
that hades has been abolished; that Satan has been 
judicially overthrown; that mortality has been swallow- 
ed up of life; and all because the kingdom of death 
has been vanquished by the complete victory of Christ's 



310 The Mercersburg Theology. 



kingdom over everything that worketh an abomina- 
tion and maketh a lie. Blessed are they whose names 
are found in the book of life. These shall enter into 
the life everlasting. Oh how we begin to long for such 
a glorious consummation ! As the approaching shades 
of life's eventide gather around us how we long for 
that rest that remaineth for the people of God! Not 
that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon with 
the apparel befitting the blessed state into which we 
hope to enter when life's fitful fever is over. 

Many subordinate questions are involved in the 
comprehensive problem of the Life Everlasting. Will 
saints have material bodies in heaven? If not, why 
not? Dr. Henry Harbaugh truly said: "Christian- 
ity glorifies matter." It may be more attenuated, 
and must be more refined than in the earthly house 
of this tabernacle. There are bodies celestial and 
bodies terrestrial.* Celestial bodies incorporate ma- 
terial in its highest attainable form, even as the bloom- 
ing flower incorporates material more refined than 
that which enters into the crude leaf at the base of the 
same plant. This order of things displays the wise 
and beautiful designs of Providence. He does not 
allov/ the flower to spring into that beauty of which 
its own delicacy is a constitutional part until after 

* In no organism, beside the human body, is matter so nearly 
allied to spirit, and so transparent with the transfused glories 
of a higher world. In man's body the image of God is repre- 
sented in a material form. Still more. In the incarnation of 
Christ, Deity is personally united with matter. This is the 
house in which God dwells! The Savior, being "in fashion as 
a man, " united the infinite Spirit with finite matter. — Dr. Har- 
baugh in The Heavenly Home, p. 197. 



The Mercersburg Theology. 311 



the rising plant has lifted the bud above the earth and 
the devouring insects that harbor around the base. 
God has shown this same benevolent wisdom upon a 
higher plane in ordaining the order of succession thvough 
which his rational creatures may pass as they climb 
the progressive stairway of human existence. Any- 
thing like a reverse order would fill our most confid- 
ing faith with tormenting doubts and fears. A re- 
fined and celestial body on earth, amidst the snows 
and storms of "the former things" would be as much 
out of place as a blooming rose on Greenland's frosty 
face, or tropic fruits beneath the icy pole. So, too, 
if it were possible for a body of literal "flesh and blood" 
to inherit the celestial kingdom of God, its presence 
there would shock the eternal fitness of things and send 
a note of discord through all the choral symphonies 
of heaven. 

Neither is there any reason whatever to suppose 
that our bodies will be so radically changed in the es- 
sential constitution of their nature that in the future 
state they will appear to themselves as having been 
torn to pieces and fashioned after another pattern. 
The tendency of all known finite life is to externalize 
itself in material. There is no evidence that God ever 
blew the breath of life into a vacuum. Indeed, ma- 
terial has no higher mission in the economy of nature 
than to furnish the opportunity for life to manifest 
itself. Here, the body without life is a corpse, and 
life, however substantial an entity, without the body, 
is without its complement; and there is no authority 
either in science or revelation to justify the supposi- 
tion that in the future normal state of man's being 



312 



The Mercersburg Theology. 



God will put asunder what he in the present state had 
joined together. The fact that the immaterial side 
of man's being may exist independently of the material 
side, or corporal body, is no evidence that such is 
either his normal state, or that he will continue thus 
forever unclothed. The separation of the material 
from the immaterial substances which here constitute 
the man in the entirety of his being is an abnormal 
state of human existence; it is the state of the dead, 
and a continuation of this state through eternity would 
be poor evidence that death had been entirely swallow- 
ed up in victory. Indeed, the mere intimation of 
such a possiblity is not very complimentary to him 
who has proclaimed himself the God of battles, and 
the complete vanquisher of death in those who have 
received the benefits of the remedy found fontally in 
the Victor's person. 

Whatever the elements entering into the constitu- 
tion of our celestial bodies, they will doubtless answer 
to the idea that the great Creator had in his wise and 
beneficent mind in ordaining the eternal fitness of 
things; and, therefore, they cannot be otherwise than 
adapted to the place that Christ has gone to prepare 
for his disciples. This implies that heaven is a holy 
place prepared (John xiv), as well as a holy state 
commenced and continued in this life. Why not? 
Man was brought into existence as a denizen of time 
and space, and his finite limitations will require him 
to continue under that twofold category until his be- 
ing is radically changed to something else; yet the 
supposition of such a change would involve an un- 
thinkable absurdity. It would be nonsense to suppose 



The Mercersburg Theology. 313 



that the essential laws and conditions of man's being 
will not extend to eternity, and that the lines of time's 
longitude will not continue into the map, the ever 
enduring map of heaven. Time may lose its metric 
character, and be no longer divisible into sections made 
and measured by rolling suns, and space may continue 
to defy all finite attempts to comprehend its bound- 
aries and boundlessness; yet if there is time for "a half 
hour of silence in heaven" there will be time enough 
for an endless day of hallelujahs loud and long, and 
space enough for the New Jerusalem more real than 
anything imaged in all its measured furlongs. How 
can it be otherwise indeed? God's heaven may not 
be localized, but the heaven prepared for man must 
have place, and be a place. As already seen, there 
must be refined material in heaven. All material, 
however attenuated or etherealized, must have ex- 
tension. Such extension must have limitations. 
However boundless space may be, creatures of space, 
being finite, must have boundaries. Man is a sub- 
stantial being, both as to his spirit and his body. 
Neither science nor revelation has given us any evi- 
dence that attenuated, refined or glorified matter, 
shall do away with its constitutional and qualified 
impenetrability. To the same extent that glorified 
persons incorporate material in constituting the to- 
tality of their being will they require that their heaven 
include environments. If the bodies of the saints be 
tangible, the substantive elements of their abode must 
in the same sense be equally so. All the furniture in 
our Father's house of many mansions will be tangible 
to the tactile touch of our celestial fingers, and all the 



314 The Mercersburg Theology. 

chalices of his banquet-chamber tangible to lips no 
longer parched with feverish thirst. Mercersburg Es- 
chatology, while it discounts the gross materialism 
of this world, is not disposed to run away into dreamy 
idealism concerning the next. God never designed 
that man, upon whom he stamped his own imperish- 
able image, should ever become a phantom to float 
upon the shoreless bosom of some imaginary sea, or 
a shadow to flit away beneath the vault of some ethereal 
sky. 

In considering the description given in the book of 
Revelation of the heavenly Jerusalem we have to do 
with more than mere imagery. Who will dare to say 
that the reality of heaven does not infinitely surpass 
the boldest flights of descriptive grandeur portrayed 
by the Seer of Patmos. The true conception of heaven 
lies between eschatological realism and the fanciful 
flights and flatteries of our subjective imagination. 
Its imagery, as such, is not employed to mock the 
longings of our yearning hearts, but to continue the 
revelation of truth which we are now only partially 
able to receive. Heavenly realities may cast their 
shadows before as an earnest of our inheritance, but 
they cannot be expressed by earthly language. Here, 
we are as liable to wander in the realm of empty dreams 
as we are to entertain conceptions too materialistic 
to enshrine the truth. Suffice it to say that heaven 
will be more real than can be represented by its o»vn 
imagery, and will include the highest facts and forms 
of all endearing and enduring realities. 

Mercersburg Theology joins readily in the general 
chorus of sound christian philosophy, that our eyes 



The Mercersburg Theology. 315 



have not yet seen, that our ears have not yet heard, 
and that our hearts have not yet experienced, the things 
which a kind Father hath laid up for those who by 
becoming children of God have also by the same birth 
become joint-heirs with Christ, the elder brother, to 
that "inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and 
that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for them." 
It is reasonable, however, to suppose that the felici- 
ties and environments will be such in their essential 
character as to surpass our most extravagant dreams 
of their reality. The reasonableness of this supposi- 
tion seems to be supported by christian science as well 
as justified by the imagery of revelation. What mean- 
ing can there be in the last few chapters of the Bible 
if heaven be less real than earth. Surely the New Jeru- 
salem with its dozen gates ajar, the crystal river with 
its living, limpid stream, and the celestial city whose 
builder and maker is God, surely these are not false 
images of nothing real, before which the wise and be- 
nevolent God would have his confiding children bow 
down and worship in the blind adoration of illusory 
hopes. Why should there not be pearly gates through 
which to enter, and golden streets upon which to walk, 
when the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come 
to Zion with songs of everlasting joy upon their heads? 
Why should there not be palms of victory borne, and 
crowns of glory worn by the exultant army of the skie3 
as they parade before the enthroned Captain of their 
salvation, and cause heaven's high arches to echo with 
hallelujahs to his everlasting praise? 

In heaven at last. We have reached the goal to 
the stadium of our earthly pilgrimage. 



316 The Mercersburg Theology. 



"The earth recedes, it disappears; 
Heaven opens on our eyes; our ears 
With sounds seraphic ring." 

Here we reap the ripened fruit of human history. Here 
human personality realizes its true ideal. Here "the 
saints of all ages in harmony meet." The kingdom 
of God consummates itself in heavenly perfection. 
This is our Father's house, and his children's eternal 
home. Here we are in exact accord with our environ- 
ment. We now enter upon a period of existence not 
limited by the categories and contractions of time and 
space. Here the convergent lines of all history focus 
themselves with christocentric glory in the Lamb on 
Mount Zion, surrounded by the sacramental hosts of 
the redeemed. 



